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We were close to a breakthrough: Sattar

Pakistan's Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar said on Tuesday evening in Islamabad that it would be wrong to characterise the Agra summit as a failure.

He revealed that Pakistan and India were "very close" to an agreement on the draft declaration at the Agra summit, but a last-minute hitch aborted that process.

He, however, added that both sides had come away with a "great deal of goodwill" from the summit and President Pervez Musharraf was optimistic that the process of dialogue that had begun at Agra would ultimately help achieve the "mutually desired results... sooner rather than later".

Sattar said there were three reasons for his optimism. First, both Musharraf and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had had a "meeting of minds". Second, there was progress in translating their vision into words, though they failed to pull it off. And third, both sides are agreed that Agra should be the foundation for a future dialogue.

Sattar said considerable progress was made at the summit-level meetings. Both sides held wide-ranging discussions on a number of issues, "particularly Jammu & Kashmir", but "it is unfortunate that the expected consummation did not materialise", he remarked.

The minister, however, expressed the hope that the two leaders would continue to meet in future to take the peace process ahead, suggesting that there was the possibility of them meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September.

Moreover, he said, he had invited External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh, whom he praised effusively for his conduct at the summit, to visit Pakistan at his earliest convenience.

"Both President Musharraf and Prime Minister Vajpayee share a common vision of peace and prosperity for their peoples in the 21st century," Sattar said.

Full text of Abdul Sattar's statement

Indo-Pak Summit 2001: The Complete Coverage

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