ISLAMABAD (PTI): Pakistan has taken the decision to send ‘a polite refusal” to India’s invitation to the army chief, Gen Asif Nawaz Janjua to visit New Delhi, a newspaper reported Sept4.
The reply to the invitation is likely to be sent by the foreign office this week itself saying “thanks for the invitation extended to the Chief Of Army Staff (COAS),” the news” reported.
Quoting foreign office sources, it said the reason behind declining the Indian offer was the “tone” of Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao’s August 24 letter addressed to his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif.
Sources in the prime minister’s secretariat told the newspaper that Rao responded to Sharif’s letter in “almost negative terms.”
The Indian reply was handed over to premier Sharif by the high commissioner S.K. Lambah on August 29. Sharif’s letter had called for a summit level meeting between the two countries to help resolve the Kashmir issue,
The sources said “the tone in the three and a half page reply from India was quite harsh on substantive terms.”
The reply said that the atmosphere at the time of the recently concluded foreign secretary level talks in New Delhi had “now significantly been changed.”
According to the foreign office sources, the decision to politely decline the Indian offer to the army chief was approved by Sharif before he left for Jakarta Nam Summit.
The decision was arrived at after “protracted consultations at the top over the last couple of weeks.”
The newspaper said that Islamabad though the time was not appropriate for the army chief to undertake the visit to India but felt that Gen Janjua would go to New Delhi at some suitable time in the future or whenever the government thinks it appropriate.”
Article extracted from this publication >> September 18, 1992
