Unnamed diplomatic sources told New Age newspaper Wednesday that the Himalayan nation had officially proposed to host the gathering of the region's top leaders in a letter to the SAARC secretariat in Kathmandu.
According to Bhutan's proposal, the meeting of the SAARC's council of ministers and foreign ministers' forum should be held April 26-27, preceded by the meetings of the standing committee and foreign secretaries April 24-25 and senior officials' meeting April 22-23.
"As Bhutan on March 13, 2009 proposed to host the 16th gathering of SAARC in spring (March-April) in 2010, and the member states so far have not expressed any reservations, the summit will be held according to the proposed schedule," said a Bangladesh foreign office source.
Member states host the SAARC summit in the alphabetic order.
After the Maldives expressed its inability to host the meeting, the SAARC secretariat consulted other member-countries to arrive at a solution.
The 16th summit was scheduled to be held in the Maldives in the second half of 2009 as decided at the 15th SAARC Summit in Sri Lanka in 2008.