JOIN USPrime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari may touch upon issues of mutual interests during their one-on-one meeting in New Delhi just before having lunch together next Sunday.
The Pakistani President is slated to visit India on Sunday, primarily on a private pilgrimage to the shrine of Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti at Ajmer. Singh is hosting a lunch for Zardari in New Delhi.
Zardari’s entourage will include Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik, who may have a brief chat with his Indian counterpart Home Minister P Chidambaram.
It is, however, not clear if Chidambaram would raise the issue of tardy progress in the trial of the seven 26/11 accused in the Anti-Terrorism Court in Rawalpindi. The Home Minister on Tuesday said the US announcement of $10 million reward on Lashkar-e-Taiba founder Hafiz Saeed, one of the brains behind the November 26, 2008 attacks in Mumbai, should prod the Pakistani Government to act against him.
Islamabad on Wednesday sent to New Delhi the initial list of about 40 people, who would accompany Zardari on his visit to India.
Zardari had last month expressed a wish to visit the revered shrine at Ajmer in Rajasthan and a request had been sent to the Indian Government through diplomatic channels.
The Pakistani Government initially proposed to keep Zardari’s visit to India limited to a private pilgrimage to Ajmer. New Delhi, however, conveyed it to Islamabad that the Prime Minister was keen to host a lunch for Zardari, who would be coming on his maiden visit to India as President of Pakistan.
Sources said on Wednesday that Zardari would first land in New Delhi and hold a meeting with Singh before joining the latter for the lunch. He would later fly to Jaipur and travel to Ajmer. The Pakistani President would return to Islamabad on the same day.
Zardari’s visit to India comes a little more than a year after New Delhi and Islamabad ended the post 26/11 diplomatic chill with Pakistani Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani joining Singh to watch the Indo-Pak cricket match at Mohali near Chandigarh on March 30, 2011.
Singh and Zardari had last met at Yekaterinburg in Russia on the sideline of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s summit in 2009 – less than a year after 10 terrorists from Pakistan attacked Mumbai and killed at least 175 people and maimed countless others in a carnage that lasted for three days.
India had suspended its Composite Dialogue with Pakistan after the 26/11. Singh had told Zardari at Yekaterinburg that his mandate was to convey to the latter that the territory of Pakistan would not be used for terrorism against India. The two countries, however, started normalizing the ties last year and had a series of talks on all the issues once covered by the Composite Dialogue, apart from Singh-Gilani meet and External Affairs Minister S M Krishna’s meeting with his counterpart Hina Rabbani Khar.
New Delhi and Islamabad are likely to hold second round of talks on all the issues before Krishna travels to Islamabad for a meeting with Khar and reviewing the progress in the parleys. Pakistan recently switched over to a negative list regime for trade, paving the way for giving India the Most Favoured Nation status by the beginning of next year.
Terror actors should be punished: PM
New Delhi: With the US announcing a $10 million bounty on Mumbai attack mastermind Hafeez Saeed, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday said those engaged in terror acts against India should be brought to book, reports PTI from New Delhi.
“All those who are engaged in terrorist acts against our country should be brought to book,” Singh told reporters on the sidelines of a function to give away Padma awards at Rashtrapati Bhawan here.
Singh was asked to comment on the US bounty on Saeed and whether he would take up the matter with Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari during his India visit on Sunday.