In an effort to break the logjam in bilateral ties with India, Pakistan has decided to invite Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit to be held there.
Making this announcement in Islamabad on Tuesday, Pakistan Foreign Office Spokesman Mohammad Faisal said Prime Minister Imran Khan in his first address had said if India takes one step forward, Pakistan will take two. Prime Minister Modi will be invited for the SAARC summit, Faisal was quoted as saying by Dawn newspaper.
SAARC summits are usually held biennially, hosted by a member state in alphabetical order. The member state hosting the summit assumes the Chair of the Association. The last SAARC Summit in 2014 was held in Kathmandu, which was attended by Modi.
The 2016 SAARC Summit was to be held in Islamabad. But after the terrorist attack on an Indian Army camp in Uri, J&K, on September 18 that year, India expressed its inability to participate in the summit due to “prevailing circumstances” and stepped up diplomatic pressure on Pakistan. Nineteen Indian soldiers were martyred in the attack.
The SAARC summit was called off after Bangladesh, Bhutan and Afghanistan too declined to participate in the Islamabad meet.
Maldives and Sri Lanka are the seventh and eighth members of the initiative.
Faisal said Prime Minister Khan in a letter to his Indian counterpart had expressed Pakistan’s openness to resolving all outstanding issues through dialogue with India. “We fought a war with India, relations cannot be fixed quickly,” Faisal said.
He said the Kartarpur Corridor, which will facilitate the visa-free travel of Indian Sikh pilgrims to Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur, Pakistan, is expected to be completed within six months.
“In this century diplomacy has completely changed,” he said, adding policies are now made based on citizens’ emotions and wishes.
Both India and Pakistan have decided to build a corridor, linking Dera Baba Nanak in Punjab’s Gurdaspur district with the Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur, Pakistan.
Meanwhile, the Indian Prime Minister will attend the two-day G20 summit in Argentina and will leave for the summit on Wednesday. Giving details about the summit, Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale on Tuesday said the Prime Minister will speak on digital revolution in India, Ayushman Bharat programme, soil health card, and other Central Government schemes besides risk posed by volatility in oil prices and terrorism.
Modi will also hold bilateral meetings with several leaders on the margins of the G20 and have a bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, he said.
Asked if Modi will also meet US President Donald Trump, Gokhale said, currently several bilateral meetings are being worked out. Modi will also be meeting United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. The Foreign Secretary said, the BRICS head of states will also meet in the margins of G20.
The Group of Twenty G20 is a leading forum of the world’s major economies that seeks to develop global policies to address today’s most pressing economic challenges.
The G20 was instrumental in stabilising the world economy. Since then, its agenda has expanded to include additional issues affecting financial markets, trade and development.
Collectively, G20 members represent all inhabited continents, 85 per cent of global economic output, two-thirds of the world’s population and 75 per cent of international trade.