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Daily News - July 31, 1998

The Pakistan Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif's attempts to bring in his proposal of peace and security initiative at the SAARC leaders Retreat were dismissed by all the remaining leaders. Official sources told AIR correspondent, K. Ganesan covering the Summit in Colombo that Mr. Sharif's attempts were rejected by the SAARC Chairperson and the Sri Lankan President, Mrs. Chandrika Kumaratunga. She rejected his attempts to circulate copies of his proposals saying SAARC was not the forum for such proposals.

The sources said not even a single leader came to support Mr. Sharif's attempts.

Meanwhile, SAARC leaders yesterday agreed to initiate concrete steps to hasten the process of establishing a south Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) and directed officials to complete the current round of tariff and trade negotiations by next month.

The date and venue of the Indo-Pak Foreign Secretary level talks for resolving outstanding differences have not been fixed. According to a senior External Affairs Ministry official in Colombo, Foreign Secretary, K.Raghunath and his Pakistani counterpart, Shamshad Ahmed will meet again today in a bid to reach an agreement. The two Foreign Secretaries had a meeting yesterday at BENTOTA, a beach resort about 60 kilometers from Colombo where the SAARC leaders had their traditional retreat.

Yesterday the SAARC leaders interacted with each other at the retreat, and the discussions were mainly on the economic agenda. India explained in detail the benefits that will accrue by its decision of lifting quantiative restrictions on over 2000 items. The Foreign Secretary Mr. Raghunath told newsmen that the Prime Minister, Mr. Vajpayee held luncheon brief meeting with all the leaders including Mr. Nawaz Sharief but clarified that there was no one to one meeting, like last evening. He said, that there were discussions with his Pakistani counterpart Mr. Shamshad Ahmed last night and today and will also discuss with him tomorrow on the resolutions.

Pakistan has ruled out any trade liberalisation with India till the Kashmir and other issues are resolved. The commerce minister of Pakistan, Mr. Ishaq Dar said this while addressing a meeting of the Karachi chamber of commerce and industry. He said Islamabad, however, will now backtrack on selected items under the agreements of the WTO.