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Nod for Sartaj's Delhi trip

The Atal Bihari Vajpayee government today accepted the Pakistan government's proposal for sending its Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz to India, but said the operations in Kargil would continue until status quo ante was attained.

An official spokesman said in New Delhi today that Prime Minister Vajpayee had accepted his Pakistan counterpart Nawaz Sharief's proposal in this regard, but the dates for the visit would be worked out through diplomatic channels.

However, the spokesman made it clear that ''our armed forces will continue with the operations until the objective of putting an end to the armed intrusion in the entire Kargil sector and the restoration of the status quo ante is attained.''

Meanwhile, Sartaj Aziz has said that the purpose of his proposed visit to New Delhi is to discuss Kashmir so that Kargil-type incidents were prevented in future.

He told the BBC Urdu Service last night that his plan to visit New Delhi, however, has not been finalised yet. ''We are trying to make contacts but there has been no reply yet,'' he said.

The offer to send Aziz to New Delhi was made two days ago by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief to his Indian counterpart Atal Bihari Vajpayee in a telephonic conversation.

But Sharief pre-conditioned the offer with the demand that India should stop air strikes in the Kargil sector. In his reply, Vajpayee had made it clear that this could not be done until Pakistan withdraws all infiltrators including Pakistani army men.

Aziz told the BBC that such incidents would keep on occurring until the Kashmir problem was resolved. ''We can have talks (with India) on how to prevent such incidents in future,'' he said.

UNI

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