Sushma, other Saarc ministers to meet in NY

Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj and her South Asian counterparts will discuss ways to end the impasse over the Saarc summit during a meeting in New York this week.

Sushma and foreign ministers of seven other member nations of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) are likely to meet on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week, sources told the DH.

This is the first time the Saarc foreign ministers will meet after the bloc’s 19th summit — scheduled to be held in Islamabad on November 9 and 10 last year — was postponed after New Delhi decided to opt out, protesting against export of cross-border terrorism from the territory under control of Pakistan. This is also the first time when Sushma and the new Pakistani Foreign Minister Khwaja Asif will together attend a multilateral meet.

The Saarc foreign ministers are likely to assess the regional situation to find out if the situation was conducive to hold the summit now. Sushma is likely to point out that Islamabad had done nothing in the past few months to bring to justice the terror operatives, who had planned and remotely coordinated the attacks on Mumbai in November, 2008, on Indian Air Force base at Pathankot in Punjab in January 2016 and on Indian Army camp at Uri in northern Kashmir in September 2016, sources in New Delhi said.