COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

Albright will push for resumption of Lahore process

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, during her meeting with External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh in Singapore next week, ''will have an opportunity to encourage a resumption and an intensification of the bilateral dialog between India and Pakistan.''

''We do want to see an early return to the Lahore process, in which both India and Pakistan would discuss all the issues dividing them, including Kashmir,'' State Department spokesman James Rubin said yesterday. Replying to a question about Albright's approach at her meeting with Jaswant Singh, he said, ''She will have an opportunity to talk about the recent events in Kashmir.''

He said, ''Secretary Albright had not met with the Indian foreign minister in some time. And as you know, India is present at these meetings (Asean), Pakistan in not.'' Both Secretary Albright and Jaswant Singh will be in Singapore on July 25, 26 and 27 in connection with the meeting of the regional forum of the Association for South East Asian Nations with which Pakistan is not associated.

The Albright-Jaswant Singh meeting will be the first high-level contact between the United States and India after the Kargil conflict. ''We'd also obviously want to have a chance to hear what India had to say and what its concerns were,'' Rubin added. The spokesman said Secretary Albright would also ''talk about the efforts that we've been making, extensive efforts, to try to deal with the non-proliferation agenda, both in the missile, the nuclear and the fissile material area, ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty et cetera.''

''So there's a whole panoply of issues to meet with the world's largest democracy, and I'm sure there are a lot of other subjects that will come up as well,'' he added. He, however, explained that ''it is not a full-fledged visit to India, it's a short meeting, and so I wouldn't expect the content to go beyond what could be discussed in a meeting as opposed to a full- fledged visit to India.''

Rubin said he was sure that ''many of the key issues will be discussed.'' When his attention was drawn to the statements issued by militants in pakistan disagreeing with the agreement signed between President Clinton and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief in Washington on July 4, to end the two-month-long Kargil conflict, Rubin said Indian officials had announced over the weekend that the Line of Control had been restored in the Kargil sector of Kashmir with the withdrawal of all forces that had infiltrated from the Pakistani side of the line. ''And, we have no reason to doubt the accuracy of the Indian statement. So that's as far as that is concerned. We welcome this development. Both India and Pakistan deserve credit for their cooperation in ending this crisis without the dangers of escalation for both the peoples of India and Pakistan, and the region and the world,'' he added.

He welcomed the Pakistani withdrawal of its forces from the Indian Kashmir and said, ''The Lahore process is something that the secretary will have a chance to talk to the Indian foreign minister about.'' When his attention was drawn to a news report from Pakistan suggesting that Sharief might have signed the CTBT during his July 4 meeting with President Clinton, Rubin responded by saying. ''I think I'd know about that if we had a signed treaty.''

UNI

Next story: Radical Couple Realizes Rebellion Has Limits

Tell us what you think of this report