COLOMBO: The current tensions between India and Pakistan were eased following talks between the foreign ministers of the two countries held here yesterday on the sidelines of the council of foreign ministers’ meeting.
Addressing a press conference, Pakistan Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi said that his talks with his Indian counterpart, Pranab Mukherjee, had defused the tensions between the two nations. “A lot of steam came out of the talks and we walked out smilingly with a sign of enhanced friendship,” Qureshi said, pointing out that the SAARC platform had given a good opportunity for the two countries to have a free and candid dialogue.
He also said the premiers of India and Pakistan will meet this weekend to thrash out a plan to improve ties strained by border clashes and bomb attacks on Indian targets. Qureshi said he and Mukherjee had “agreed mutually” that the countries’ prime ministers would “come out with a comprehensive statement on (future) bilateral engagement.”
“We shared our perception about our bilateral relations, about composite (peace) dialogue and certain recent events,” Mukherjee told reporters. “I can assure you our discussion today was a frank, candid, open discussion,” Qureshi said.
Qureshi said that the two parties discussed most of the burning problems. The minister also said that his country is assisting Sri Lanka in combating terror by offering military training and supplying arms to Colombo. “We will continue to do such a relationship to wipe out terror from the region,” he asserted.
The newly elected chairman of the council of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) foreign ministers, Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama said that the SAARC under the leadership President Mahinda Rajapaksa will make efforts to cooperate with the regional bodies such as the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to make the optimum use of such bodies.
Bogollagama said that eight South Asian countries, most of which are facing violent insurgencies, have agreed to pool efforts to fight terrorism and approved a draft agreement on mutual legal assistance in criminal matters. He said that foreign ministers of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, the Maldives, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan also approved yesterday draft agreements to launch a regional development fund. The fund will have a corpus of $307 million and a food bank to ensure greater food security within the region.
Bogollagama said that the future SAARC will be people-oriented. “People should be at the heart of all SAARC processes. Socio-economic development is linked to the creation of peace and stability. We are confident that the Colombo declaration would contribute to building trust offering a pragmatic impetus to regional cooperation in South Asia.”
The South Asian regional summit is being held in the shadow of a series of bomb blasts in India, and another at its embassy in Kabul this month, which India blamed on Pakistan’s spy agency. The attacks together killed more than 100 people.
India said after the Kabul attack that its four-year-old peace process with Pakistan was “under stress” because its nuclear-armed foe was “inciting terror” inside India and trying to hit its interests abroad. But Pakistan has rejected the charge and said peace talks were “on track,” and India was pointing an accusing finger without any evidence.
The talks between the ministers also come amid a sudden rise in reported cease-fire violations along the de facto border dividing the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.
— With input from agencies
