KATMANDU/NEW DELHI — Indian and Pakistani leaders showed no signs yesterday that they would hold direct talks to ease a bitter military and diplomatic standoff as a long-awaited South Asian summit in Nepal was delayed by a day. Hopes also dimmed for informal dialogue between the nuclear powers’ leaders, as the delay prompted the cancellation of a retreat where they could have talked away from the media spotlight.
India also said there was no "conducive climate" for direct talks between India and Pakistan in Katmandu. The postponement of the summit until today was forced by the late arrival of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, whose flight from China was delayed by several hours due to bad weather. Musharraf, who had flown via China because of an Indian ban on Pakistani planes in its airspace, hinted on his arrival in Katmandu that he was ready for talks with Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.
"If there is willingness on both sides there can be talks; it can’t be a one-sided affair," said Musharraf, attending his first summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation since seizing power in a 1999 coup. "I am meeting all the leaders of the SAARC countries, but a meeting with the Indian prime minister is not sure," he told reporters.
With Vajpayee ruling out formal face-to-face talks with Musharraf, the key opportunity for a private meeting would have been a retreat near Mount Everest last night — an event canceled because of Musharraf’s late arrival. Indian officials said Vajpayee would return home as scheduled tomorrow to hold talks in New Delhi with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is on a peace mission to the region.
The seven SAARC leaders last evening attended a banquet hosted by Nepal’s King Gyanendra, where Musharraf and Vajpayee were not seated next to each other, spokesmen said. But Pakistani spokesman Rashid Qureshi told reporters "the concept of a retreat has not been changed" and that a new venue may be chosen for the event.
An Indian spokeswoman also hinted a retreat was still possible, saying it "will depend on practical considerations of time." But she said there was no "conducive climate" for direct talks between India and Pakistan in Katmandu. "It is not as if the door has been shut with Pakistan for a dialogue, but under the present circumstances when the seat of a democracy was attacked a certain threshold was crossed," she said.
With some Indian hawks calling for tougher action against Islamabad, Pakistani officials at the summit released a statement saying China had assured Musharraf of its "principled and everlasting support" for Pakistan faced with "the potentially volatile situation that has arisen due to the assembling of Indian forces close to the Pakistani border."
Qureshi, the Pakistani spokesman, said "maybe their (the Indians’) whole army" is on the border, which he said gave India "dangerous capabilities." "We feel the Indian government must pull back so that whatever needs to be done is done peacefully through dialogue," he said.
