Search the Internet          Tips

Vajpayee, Musharraf seek middle ground

The one on one meeting now underway between Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and President Pervez Musharaf at the Jaypee Palace Hotel is expected to set a liberal tone, while accomodating the stated postions of both sides vis a vis the the summit.

Sources within the Indian delegation said that both leaders are exploring ways to address the issue of Kashmir without being seen as compromising on their respective positions.

India has been demanding that talks be held under the composite dialogue structure, while Pakistan wants Kashmir to form the one-point agenda.

The meeting started at 11.37 am, seven minutes behind schedule. While the two leaders engage in talks, senior officials of both delegations have been accomodated in seperate anterooms where they will await the call for the delegation-level discussions.

Though the one to one talks between Vajpayee and Musharraf are expected to last 45 minutes, officials of the Indian delegation say that this timeframe is not set in stone, and that the two leaders could continue their discussions beyond that deadline if they thought it fit to do so.

Though no clear indications have emerged as yet about the tenor of the talks, hope is high in the Indian camp that the two leaders would be able to give shape to the broad contours of a possible future dialogue mechanism, where Kashmir would be a key -- but not sole -- point.

Indications are that both leaders will strive to see that the summit is not submerged in bureaucratic verbosity. “The President is hopeful that the two leaders would be able to strike a new path,” a senior Pakistani official said.

While the two leaders will try and arrive at a concensus on broad policy, the task of nailing down the specifics will be left to the foreign ministers of both sides, when they meet for their own one on one deliberations later this afternoon.

External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Abdus Sattar, along with their secretaries and other officials, are expected to discuss ways of improving on the eight-point composite dialogue process.

Indo-Pak Summit 2001: The Complete Coverage

Back to top

Tell us what you think of this report