For SAARC’s Sake Mend Ties, India, Pakistan Urged

Thimphu, April 28 – Maldives President Mohammed Nasheed Wednesday created a flutter at the 16th SAARC summit here by asking India and Pakistan to mend their ties for greater regional cooperation.

‘I hope neighbours can find ways to compartmentalise their differences while finding ways to move forward. I am of course referring to India and Pakistan,’ Nasheed said in his address at the opening of the two-day SAARC summit being held in the Bhutan capital.

Referring to a scheduled Thursday afternoon meeting between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani Premier Yousuf Raza Gilani, Nasheed said: ‘I hope this summit will lead to greater dialogue between (them).’

The remarks came as a surprise as bilateral issues and relations are not taken up at multilateral forums such as the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). It was unusual for the head of a state to have raised the tensions between the two South Asian giants.

Manmohan Singh and Gilani are scheduled to meet Thursday on the sidelines the SAARC summit, marking the latest efforts between the two nuclear powered neighbours to restart stalled peace talks.

India called off its composite peace process with Pakistan after the 26/11, 2008, Mumbai terror attack that left 166 people dead. India blamed terrorists based in Pakistan for the nearly 60-hour attack.

The two South Asian giants have fought three wars since 1947 and were at the brink of nuclear confrontation during the Kargil conflict in July 1999 when Pakistani intruders occupied Indian peaks in the cold desert border district. The military conflict erupted a year after the two countries test-detonated nuclear bombs in May 1998.

The two neighbours saw a thaw in relations in 2004, leading to a restart of peace talks, but a deep freeze overcame the bilateral ties in the aftermath of the Mumbai mayhem.

Pakistan has acknowledged the Mumbai attackers were based on its soil and has arrested some members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the terror group that India blames for the attacks.

But India has been maintaining that Pakistan should destroy terror infrastructure on its soil before composite talks could be restarted.

Posted by Vamban on Apr 28, 2010 @ 10:45 PM Filed under Bhutan, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry