Natwar due in April for ACD meeting

Published February 24, 2005

NEW DELHI, Feb 23: Foreign ministers of India and Pakistan are expected to meet in Islamabad in April on the margins of the Asia Cooperation Dialogue (ACD), during which Iran is due to be inducted to further expand the 23-nation group , informed sources said on Wednesday.

Bhutan and the United Arab Emirates are also waiting in the wings to be invited to the club that includes Japan and China along with most Asean countries.

The sources said it would be the highest-level contact foreseen between India and Pakistan until the revived Saarc summit, now being reworked to be held in late April or early May, takes place.

Since the Bangladesh foreign minister is also expected to be in Islamabad for the ACD meeting, it could be an occasion for an India-Bangladesh foreign ministers' meeting, effectively enabling them to bury the differences that led to the cancellation of the summit last month.

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao is likely to address the fourth ministerial meeting of the ACD, scheduled to take place in Islamabad on April 5. Pakistani officials said three other invitations to Indian leaders were outstanding in a bilateral context.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, United Progressive Alliance chairperson and Congress president Sonia Gandhi, and the Bharatiya Janata Party president Lal Kishan Advani have yet to indicate when they want to travel to Pakistan.

A visit by the Indian prime minister to Islamabad may yet precede the other two. Or else as of now the only other possibility of his meeting with President Gen Pervez Musharraf seems to be in September during their customary visit to the UN General Assembly.

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