NEW DELHI, 17 March 2005 — Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf will visit India on April 17 to watch a cricket match and also hold talks with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, an Indian government spokesman said yesterday.
“On April 17, Mr. Musharraf will be in Delhi to watch the cricket match. He will also meet with the prime minister,” Mammohan’s spokesman Sanjaya Baru said.
An official in Islamabad said earlier yesterday the president was “expected” to visit New Delhi on April 17, when the Pakistan cricket team will play the last of six one-day international matches against India.
Musharraf last visited India in June 2001 for a summit in the Taj Mahal town of Agra with then prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.
The meeting collapsed over the protracted Kashmir dispute. Just months later, armed militants launched an attack on the Indian Parliament in which 15 people, including five militants, died. India accused Pakistan of sponsoring the gunmen and the nuclear rivals teetered to the brink of their fourth war.
The crisis was averted after months of diplomacy by Western nations and in January 2004 the two countries launched an ambitious peace process when Vajpayee visited Islamabad to end a nearly two-year thaw in bilateral ties.
Since then the neighbors have been engaged in what they call a “composite dialogue” aimed at resolving eight bilateral disputes including the core problem of Kashmir.
Manmohan and Musharraf met on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting last September during and according to sources on both sides developed a positive personal rapport. The second round of the official-level talks concluded last month with a visit by Indian External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh to Islamabad where it was decided to launch a inter-Kashmir bus service between the divided zones of the troubled state.
The service, which has been a long-time demand of people living on both sides of the dividing line, is to be flagged off in Indian Kashmir by Manmohan on April 7.
