Natwar Singh to visit Pak in July third week

Foreign Minister K Natwar Singh will visit Pakistan in the third week of July, Pakistan newspapers reported yesterday.

Citing diplomatic sources in Islamabad, the newspapers said Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, in his telephonic talks early this week with Singh, had extended an invitation and that the latter had accepted.

In an interview to India Today magazine, Natwar Singh had said he would meet Kasuri in August, but had said nothing about going to Islamabad in July.

Singh has to visit Islamabad to attend the three-day ministerial council meeting of the South Asian Association for Regional Conference (Saarc) in the third week of July. Pakistan is Saarc chairman for the current term.

Interestingly, Kasuri called Singh on Saturday, the second time in a week. In the course of the conversation, Singh is reported to have assured Kasuri that the future of Indo-Pak relations did not lie in the past, and that contacts between the neighbours would be further intensified.

Analysts say shorn of diplomatese, this is a sign of Pakistan seeking reassurance that the India-Pakistan relationship will continue along the track laid down by the Vajpayee regime.

An element of tension had reappeared after Singh's assertion that the Simla Agreement would be the basis for charting the future course of India-Pakistan relations.

Pakistan's sensitivity to the Simla Agreement stems from the fact that it had to sign it after it had lost a war. Pakistan would rather use as a reference point the press note issued by General Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee at their last historic meeting in Islamabad earlier this year, which became the most recent template to carry India-Pakistan relations forward.

Despite repeated clarifications by Singh and India's foreign office that the Simla Agreement and all other agreements reached by India and Pakistan  afterwards would determine the further progress of relations, Kasuri called Singh again on Saturday, after the publication of his interview in India Today.