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India, Pakistan officials meet before SAARC summit
[Dawn]  Senior officials from India and Pakistain met in the Maldives Tuesday as they prepared for a summit of South Asian nations in the remote atoll of Addu, an official said.Maldivian Foreign Secretary Ahmed Naseer said India's foreign secretary Ranjan Mathai and his Pakistain counterpart Salman Bashir met during the meeting of bigwigs, but declined to give details. "They met, but I cannot comment on their bilateral matters and what they discussed," Naseer told news hounds after officials met to hammer out a declaration to be approved by their foreign ministers and at the summit. Naseer said foreign secretaries also discussed greater trade cooperation among members of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and said Pakistain's decision announced last week to grant the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status to India had also figured in their talks. However, if you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning... Naseer said they had also decided that any trade concessions agreed within the regional grouping should be better than the existing bilateral trade arrangements. However, it was a brave man who first ate an oyster... he declined comment on Pakistain's MFN offer to India, the biggest member of the grouping which accounts for a fifth of humanity in one of the poorest regions in the world. Many smaller members of SAARC, which groups Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistain and Sri Lanka, have expressed concern ...meaning the brow was mildly wrinkled, the eyebrows drawn slightly together, and a thoughtful expression assumed, not that anything was actually done or indeed that any thought was actually expended... that Indo-Pakistain tensions were hampering regional trade. Posted by: Fred 2011-11-09 |
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