Will Vajpayee, Musharraf meet at SAARC summit?
By K. K. Katyal NEW DELHI, AUG. 17. The earliest occasion for the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, and the Pakistan President and Chief Executive, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, to meet will be the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit in Kathmandu towards the end of the year. The Nepal Government, the next Chairman of the grouping, has suggested December 28 to December 31 as the dates for the summit. If this schedule is finally approved, the “retreat,” tentatively fixed for December 30, could bring the two leaders together for what may be an informal round of discussions – the first after the Agra meeting. The possibility of a meeting in New York, on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly session next month, had been discounted in diplomatic circles here of late. This was confirmed by a Pakistan Foreign Office spokesman in Islamabad on Thursday, saying that it “does not seem on the cards.” The two heads, it appears, are billed to address the U.N. ses
