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.