SAARC officials meet in Nepal amid Indo-Pak tension

Senior officials of SAARC nations are meeting here and are expected to discuss new date for the 19th SAARC summit which was postponed last year after India and four others pulled out of it accusing Pakistan of not cooperating on combating terrorism.
The 53rd Programming Committee meeting of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) began in Kathmandu today.
The two-day Programming Committee meeting is being held in the wake of the postponement of the 19th SAARC summit that was supposed to take place in Pakistan in November last year.
The joint secretary-level meeting is being led by Nepalese Foreign Ministry's Regional Organisation Division Chief Mani Prasad Bhattarai.

Nepal is hosting the meeting in capacity as the SAARC Chair.
The meeting taking place on an initiative of the SAARC Secretariat.

The meeting will deliberate on SAARC's activities since mid-April 2016, operation of the SAARC Secretariat and the budget for the next year.
The meeting is expected to pave way for rescheduling of the 19th SAARC Summit.
Nepal, current chair of the SAARC, had postponed the SAARCsummit until further notice after Afghanistan, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India requested to postpone the summit in Islamabad scheduled for November 9 and 10 last year, following escalation of tension between India and Pakistan.

India and others had blamed Pakistan for not creating a conducive environment and not cooperating on combating cross-border terrorism in South Asia for holding the SAARC Summit, charges rejected by Pakistan.
The decisions taken by Programming Committee meeting will be forwarded to the Standing Committee meeting for consideration.