Singh likely to meet Gilani

Pakistan is insisting that the Singh-Gilani meet should lead to resumption of the Composite Dialogue, but India is not yet ready to go beyond Foreign Secretary level talks and restart the process that was stalled after the November 26, 2008 attacks in Mumbai.

Islamabad on Sunday formally asked New Delhi to hand over to it the lone surviving 26/11 gunman Ajmal Amir Kasab, who is now being tried in a court in Mumbai. It also requested New Delhi to send Indian magistrates, who had recorded and confirmed the confessional statement of Kasab, to Pakistan so that they could testify in a court in Rawalpindi where the seven Lashkar-e-Toiba operatives were being tried for plotting the carnage in Mumbai.

Pakistan had on Sunday set the stage for Singh-Gilani meet in Thimphu by handing over to India six dossiers – containing its responses to the three sets of documents that Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao had handed over to her Pakistani counterpart Salman Bashir in New Delhi on February 25 last.

Both the PM, himself, and the External Affairs Minister S M Krishna hinted that the two leaders would possibly have a bilateral meeting in the capital of Bhutan.

“We will be coming under one roof. So, if we come at the same time, it is obvious we will run into each other,” Singh told journalists in New Delhi.  The External Affairs Minister, who is already in Thimphu, said that he was not ruling out the meeting between the two Prime Ministers. Krishna said that all bilateral issues between India and Pakistan could be discussed when Singh and Gilani would meet.

Krishna said that New Delhi was examining the dossiers Pakistan had handed over to India on Sunday.