Roundup: "Unexpected" Good Beginning for India-Pak Summit

An "unexpected" good beginning for the historic meeting between Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and visiting Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf Sunday in Agra has turned many sceptics and pessimists into optimists on the question whether this summit will be successful and yield positive results.

The summit talks, the first between leaders of both countries in more than two years since February 1999, formally began at around 11:30 a.m. Sunday at the Jaypee Palace hotel here as scheduled.

At a press briefing at 4:30 p.m. at the media center in Mughal Sheraton hotel, an Indian foreign office spokeswoman told a roomful of journalists, who had been waiting anxiously for this moment for more than four hours, that the talks between the two sides had been held in a "very cordial, frank and constructive manner".

After one and a half hours of one-to-one talks, Vajpayee and Musharraf also led over an hour of delegation level talks, she said.

Obviously encouraged by the smooth development of their talks on Sunday, the two leaders also decided to "have further meetings" later on Sunday and Monday. Talks will also be held between the two delegations at official and ministerial levels, the spokeswoman added.

Another major news for today was that Vajpayee had received and accepted an invitation from Musharraf to visit Pakistan during their talks.

Following the press briefing, an air of great relief and high optimism could be easily seen among Indian officials and several hundred correspondents here, many of whom had doubted if the summit could achieve any progress just 24 hours ago.

While no details about Sunday's talks were disclosed at the press briefing, many correspondents took immediate notice of the major changes that had taken place on the agenda of the talks.

Originally the one-to-one talks between Vajpayee and Musharraf was scheduled to last only 15 to 20 minutes, but the actual time of their meeting very surprisingly turned out to be much longer, said an Indian reporter.

Meanwhile, continued talks on Sunday evening and Monday had never appeared on any official agendas before, even on the eve of the summit. It was quite clear that the two sides chose to make their decision only after the first round of talks were held.

If these "auspicious signs" are still not convincing enough, what Sushma Swaraj, India's minister of information and broadcasting, said in an interview with a local TV channel on Sunday afternoon should be.

The development of talks on Sunday had gone "beyond our expectation", said Swaraj, adding that the talks were moving toward the right direction.

She also noted that the two sides discussed a wide range of issues including Kashmir, cross-border terrorism, bilateral trade and nuclear security.

A popular view of pessimism before the summit was that with Pakistan insisting on Kashmir being the focus of the talks and India laying more stress on other issues, the two sides would not have enough common ground to work out any concrete results.

But now what most correspondents here are talking about is the possibility of even more rounds of talks and change of itinerary for the Pakistani president, who they say is also likely to prolong his three-day visit.

A joint statement by the two sides at the end of the talks and a joint press conference by Vajpayee and Musharraf are also hot speculations at the media center. But the most immediate excitement for the media could be another press briefing scheduled for Sunday evening, shortly after the second round of talks that began at around 6:30 p.m. are closed.

Would this one be more encouraging than the previous one in the day? Almost everyone here is asking this question.






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