Vajpayee, Musharraf to Face Frosty Reunion at NAM Summit

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, February 17, 2003

Vajpayee, Musharraf to Face Frosty Reunion at NAM Summit

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Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf may share a multilateral platform in Kuala Lumpur later this month, but there is very little possibility of a meeting between the two.

Prime minister Vajpayee is scheduled to head a high-level Indian delegation for the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in theMalaysian capital between Feb. 21 and 25.

Meanwhile, a senior official of the Pakistani Foreign Office confirmed that Musharraf would attend the summit instead of Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, who is busy with the Feb. 24-27 elections to the upper house of Parliament, the Senate.

However, a senior official of the Indian External Affairs Ministry said last week, "There is nothing for us to arrange a meeting between the Prime Minister and President Musharraf (on thesidelines of the NAM summit)."

He indicated that the Indian stand for resuming talks with Pakistan is well known and there has been no shift.

India will not move to the talks table till Pakistan "completely" stops "cross-border terrorism" and dismantles "all itsterror apparatus" against India, he said.

He added, "We don't have to meet the Pakistan leader to earn a few diplomatic brownie points."

But analysts said that instead of shaking hands, as they did inKathmandu during a South Asian summit in January last year, Vajpayee and Musharraf might use the forum to blame each other.

The NAM summit comes on the heels of a new roadblock in the tense ties between the two South Asian neighbors. In less than a month, New Delhi and Islamabad expelled nine officials each from each other's missions on charges of spying.

The NAM summit will mark the fourth time that the top Indian and Pakistani leaders share a dais since both countries came to the brink of war following a terror attack on the Indian Parliament on Dec. 13, 2001.

India blamed "Pakistan-backed terrorists" for the attack, whichPakistan has denied.

The last summit was held in Durban, South Africa, in 1998. Vajpayee and Pakistan's then Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz represented their countries in that meeting and used the forum to restate their known stands on Kashmir.

Representatives from 114 NAM member states will attend the Kuala Lumpur summit.

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