Indian PM accepts Musharraf's invitation to visit Pakistan
Indian PM accepts Musharraf's invitation to visit Pakistan
BHUBANESWAR, India (Agencies): Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said on Sunday he has accepted an invitation from Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf for another round of talks between the two leaders.
"Only the timing of the visit and the place we will meet is to be decided," Vajpayee told reporters on a tour of the flood-hit eastern state of Orissa.
His comments came a day after Vajpayee's ruling Hindu nationalist BJP party said further talks between India and Pakistan would have to hinge on the neighboring state's stand on "terrorism" in Kashmir.
The July 14-16 Vajpayee-Musharraf summit in the Taj Mahal town of Agra failed to issue a joint declaration, with a territorial dispute over the divided state of Kashmir the sticking point.
Pakistan said Kashmir must be a "core" issue in any joint declaration for easing bilateral tensions.
India, which accuses Pakistan of backing Islamic insurgents in Kashmir, insisted its neighbor must stop supporting separatist groups in the Himalayan state.
Pakistan has consistently denied the charges but says it offers diplomatic and moral support to what it describes as the Kashmiris' legitimate struggle for self-determination.
Vajpayee rejected newspaper reports that he was under pressure from partners of his BJP-led coalition government to drop his planned trip to Pakistan.
"There is absolutely no pressure on me and I don't work under pressure," he added.
Vajpayee, however, said Musharraf came across as an inexperienced leader during their summit talks earlier this month, media reports said on Sunday.
Vajpayee told the national executive committee meeting of his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that he knew on day one of last summit that the talks would fail.
"It seemed that Musharraf had not come for peace talks. He was a soldier in uniform who had made his intentions clear and showed his inexperience in international affairs," the United News of India quoted Vajpayee as telling the closed-door meeting late on Saturday.
"I knew on the first day itself that the summit would not be successful. He was quite clueless about our history, politics and rules of international diplomacy," the Hindustan Times newspaper quoted the prime minister as saying about Pakistan's army chief- turned-president.
The Vajpayee-Musharraf summit, the first in over two years between the nuclear-capable foes, was aimed to resolve over 50 years of animosity between the neighbors.
But the two leaders could not even agree on a joint statement at the end of the talks which were bogged down over the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir and India's concerns over what it says is Pakistan-fueled militancy in Kashmir.
According to an opinion poll on Sunday, most Indians distrust Musharraf but want the recently resumed dialogue between New Delhi and Islamabad to continue.
The poll for the Hindustan Times revealed that 70 percent of Indians distrust General Musharraf and doubt his sincerity in wanting to solve the 54-year-old Kashmir dispute.
The poll comes exactly two weeks after Vajpayee met Musharraf in the Taj Mahal town of Agra for the first summit between the two countries in more than two years.
An overwhelming 77 percent of those surveyed said the Agra summit was a failure for India, while 71 percent felt the summit was a failure for Pakistan.
While 63 percent of those surveyed favored a continuation of the dialogue with Pakistan, 67 percent supported the view that New Delhi should discuss the Kashmir issue with Islamabad.
However, an overwhelming 76 percent of the respondents said New Delhi should concede nothing to Islamabad until it stopped cross-border terrorism.