PM Modi To Visit Pakistan Next Year For SAARC Summit
10 July, Ufa
Prime Minister Narendra Modi would go to Pakistan next year, it was announced here Friday as a major take away of his much awaited bilateral meeting with his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif on the sidelines of the SCO summit.
The two leaders held about an hour-long meeting, much beyond the schedule, and took decisions seen as a major breakthrough in the relations of the two estranged neighbours.
Modi will be the first Indian prime minister after 2004 to undertake a visit to the neighbouring country. Atal Behari Vajpayee had gone to Islamabad in that year to attend the SAARC Summit. He had earlier gone to Pakistan when he led the bus journey to Lahore in 1999.
The decision of Modi to accept Sharif’s invitation to visit Islamabad to attend the SAARC summit next year is being seen as bold step that would go a long way in restoring the trust between the two countries.
The invitation had in fact been standing since Sharif came here last year to attend Modi’s swearing in ceremony.
There have been several invitations to Vajpayee’s successor Dr Manmohan Singh too but the idea never materialised.
And after the Mumbai terror attack, the ties were completely derailed though later the Foreign Ministers of the two countries resumed the peace process. However, various incidents on the border again derailed the process.
During the Manmohan Singh regime, the view taken by India was that Pakistan should show evidence of some concrete action against the culprits of the Mumbai terror attack before the prime ministerial visit could happen.
After Vajpayee’s Lahore visit, former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf had come to India in 2005 and later in 2009 when he was out of power.
Sharif also visited Delhi, though it was a private visit during which he went to the shrine of famous sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, but stopped for a few hours in New Delhi to meet Dr Singh.
Besides, former Pakistan prime minister Yousuf Raza Geelani came to Mohali to watch the world cup semi-final between India and Pakistan at the invitation of Dr Singh in 2011