New Delhi, March 04 (IANS) Leaders of India and Pakistan are expected to meet on the sidelines of a global security summit in Washington next month in yet another bid to revive their stalemated dialogue, well-placed sources said.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is set to go to Washington to attend the two-day Nuclear Security Summit starting April 12 that will focus on expanded global cooperation to prevent atomic material from falling into the hands of terrorists and non-state actors.
The conference, an initiative of US President Barack Obama, will be attended by leaders of 44 countries, including India and Pakistan.
It is not yet clear whether Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari or Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani will represent Pakistan at the summit. In Islamabad, Pakistan Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit has confirmed Islamabad’s participation in the conference, but added that the composition of the delegation has not yet been decided.
If Gilani or Zardari goes to Washington, there is a strong possibility of a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the security summit in Washington, well-placed sources told IANS.
“Nothing has been decided yet. We don’t know who is representing Pakistan,” the sources added.
If the meeting does take place, it will be the first interaction between the leaders of the two countries since they met in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh in July last year.
A positive meeting could create the right atmospherics for a more constructive interaction on the sidelines of the SAARC summit in the Bhutanese capital Thimphu towards April-end.
In Sharm el-Sheikh, Manmohan Singh had taken a calculated gamble to delink terrorism from the composite dialogue process and included a reference to Balochistan in the joint statement, leading to a strong domestic backlash against alleged capitulation by India.