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Manmohan-Shaukat meeting likely on sidelines of SAARC Summit in Dhaka. |
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NEW DELHI, January 25 (Online): Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will visit Dhaka early next month to attend the 13th SAARC Summit to be held on February 6, 7 and hold bilateral meetings on its margins with Pakistan PM Shaukat Aziz and other South Asian leaders.
Indications are that Singh will leave Delhi on February five and return after the summit's closing ceremony on February seven. The summit was earlier scheduled to be held from January 09 to 11 but had to be postponed owing to December 26 tsunami disaster, which wrought havoc in three of the seven SAARC countries--India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives.
The new dates for the summit were finalised through consensus among the member nations.
The SAARC Council of Ministers' meeting will be held on February five while the SAARC Standing Committee meeting will take place on 3-4th February. The Programming Committee is meeting on 1st and 2nd February.
The duration of the summit has been reduced to two days and the SAARC leaders will not go in for their traditional "retreat" which provides them an opportunity to hold informal bilateral consultations.
This has been done as the leaders of India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives are still busy meeting the challenges posed by the tsunami tragedy.
The Council of Ministers' meeting also will be a one-day affair and not a two-day engagement, as has been the practice.
Manmohan's delegation to the summit will include External Affairs Minister K Natwar Singh, Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran and other senior officials.
This will be Prime Minister's first visit to a neighbouring country after assuming his post in May.
It will provide him an opportunity to hold bilateral talks not only with his Pakistani counterpart but also with the leaders of Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldives.
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