ISLAMABAD, 20 February 2007 — Pakistan’s foreign minister said yesterday he was going ahead with a trip to India today as planned, despite “horrendous” bomb blasts on a train in India that killed at least 67 people, most of them Pakistanis.
Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri condemned the blasts on the train bound for Pakistan and said, if anything, the two countries should step up their peace efforts in response.
“I will be leaving tomorrow for Delhi to further the peace process,” Kasuri told reporters here yesterday. “It is a horrendous act of terrorism which everybody would condemn unreservedly,” Kasuri said. “Innocent men and women lost their lives. Most of the dead are Pakistanis.”
Officials in India said the attack appeared to be an attempt to undermine the peace process and Kasuri said India and Pakistan should not let the bombers achieve their objectives. “In fact, if at all, we should hasten the peace process,” he said.
In a clear message that the three-year-old peace process between India and Pakistan can’t be held hostage by terrorists, Kasuri will hold talks with India’s Minister for External Affairs Pranab Mukherjee tomorrow on a wide array of bilateral issues that will focus on how to deal jointly with the scourge of terrorism. This will set the stage for the first meeting of the joint anti-terror mechanism in Islamabad on March 6.
Mukherjee and Kasuri will also discuss liberalization of the visa regime and the re-opening of consulates in Mumbai and Karachi. Ahead of their meeting, the technical-level joint working groups on education and information will meet today. Six of the eight technical-level JWGs on agriculture, health, science and technology, information technology and telecommunications, environment and tourism met last year.
Gas Project to Be Signed Soon
Pakistan will shortly sign the $7 billion trilateral gas pipeline project involving Iran, Pakistan and India, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said yesterday.
“We have almost resolved the pricing issue and hope to launch the project shortly,” he told journalists. He said the response of India to the project has been positive. Pakistan, Iran and India are working on this project for quite some time. “We are also weighing other options like importing gas from Qatar and Turkmenistan through Afghanistan. Aziz said due to our economic growth we will need to import additional gas. Our energy needs are set to increase by 8 to 10 percent annually.
