ISLAMABAD (PTI): Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif Aug.14 said that a summit meeting between him and his Indian counterpart P.V.Narasimha Rao in Pakistan would be “very much desirable.”
We will welcome that very much,” Sharif said when asked about the possibility of the two leaders meeting in each other’s’ countries even though they had been holding dialogues in third countries.
Talking to newsmen at a reception hosted by him on the occasion of Pakistan’s Independence Day, Sharif said he had invited Rao to visit Pakistan when they met at Rio De Jeneiro during the June earth summit.
He (Rao) has already visited Pakistan when he was the foreign minister, so this time as prime minister we will be very happy to receive him,” Sharif said.
Asked about the scheduled talks between him and Rao on September 3, during the Jakarla nonaligned summit, the Pakistan prime minister said “I am looking forward to that meeting very anxiously hope this meeting will be very meaningful and fruitful. There should be a positive outcome of the meeting now.”
Sharif said he and Rao had now held dialogues four times at Harare, Colombo, Davos (Switzerland) and Rio in the last one year and “this time I am looking forward to some positive results,” Talking to Indian journalists here, the Pakistan foreign secretary Shehrayar Khan said that the forthcoming foreign secretary level talks, scheduled to be held in New Delhi would provide a “positive platform” for the dialogue between the two prime ministers in Jakarta,
Khan felt that the talks should provide the “right framework for the Jakarta dialogue as it is the two prime ministers who really set the tone and the pace for the relationship between two countries.”
Article extracted from this publication >> Aug 28, 1992
