NEW DELHI: Pakistan will raise the Kashmir issue in the bilateral talks between President Farooq Leghari and the Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao during the forthcoming SAARC Summit which opens here on May 2.
“Kashmir is on the top of our agenda,” Asaf Ali, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister said, on his arrival here to attend the SAARC summit. He said that Pakistan had requested bilateral talks between President Leghari and Prime Minister Rao in which, “we will raise the issue.” Asaf Ali, who was the first SAARC Foreign Minister to arrive here, said that keeping the SAARC charter in view, Pakistan would not raise the issue in the open SAARC forum.
“The SAARC charter restricts us to raise issues of regional and common benefit only. It does not give room to: discuss bilateral problems in open forum,” Asaf Ali, on his first visit to India after independence, said, adding, “in bilateral talks such restrains do not exist.”
“Along with Kashmir, we also want to focus on other major irritants affecting the relations between the two countries,” the Pakistani Foreign Minister said.
Asked why Pakistan had not responded to India’s numerous overtures to discuss the entire gamut of bilateral relations, he said that “Kashmiris the foremost issue and had to be settled, before the two nations could go on to other issues.” Asked whether Prime Minister, Ms. Benazir Bhutto’s absence from the SAARC summit indicated that Pakistan did not attach much significance to the SAARC forum, Asaf Ali said that Pakistan was committed 10 the SAARC and wanted that the “forum should work.”
He said Ms, Benazir Bhutto could not attend the summit due to her preoccupations within Pakistan, with the framing of the upcoming budget taking most of her time.
Article extracted from this publication >> May 5, 1995
