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Musharraf's kin to meet him in Agra

Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow

Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf will meet his long-lost relatives on this side of the border on Sunday or Monday in Agra.

The general's second cousin Sidrat Ansari and his wife Shehnaz, residents of Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, received a call on Thursday from Pakistan president's secretariat expressing the general's willingness to meet them.

"We received a call today [Thursday] from one Mr Akhtar, who introduced himself as the Pakistani president's personal secretary," Ansari told rediff.com

Ansari had earlier sent a letter to the Pakistani high commission in New Delhi, seeking an audience with General Musharraf. "I did so after I read in the media that the Pakistani president had expressed a desire to meet his relatives in India."

Akhtar made it clear that the meeting would be held in Agra, where the general has kept a fairly long slot free for private engagements. But Ansari was told to await the next call for a confirmation of the time and place of the meeting.

Sure enough, the 47-year-old educationist, who once headed the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee's minorities cell, was all excited about the big event. His wife Shehnaz was equally thrilled. "Having heard so much about him, we are looking forward to having an audience with him," she said.

But their meeting would not be a mere exchange of pleasantries, for the Ansaris have a bigger plan in mind. They propose to hand over a signed letter to the general, urging him to be generous in bringing to an end half a century of bitterness between the two countries.

"We hope the Agra summit would not end up like the Lahore bus ride," he said. "Much depends on Musharraf saheb to open a new era of Indo-Pak relations, where barriers will be reduced and mutual mistrust will become a thing of the past."

The letter addressed to the Pakistani leader has been signed by well-known Lucknavis representing three prominent communities -- Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs.

Besides the Ansaris, the signatories to the letter are social activist and former Lucknow University vice-chancellor Dr Roop Rekha Verma, prominent Shia scholar and vice-president of the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board Maulana Kalbe Sadiq, Mohammad Salahuddin, president of the All-India Sunni Youth Federation and Dr Gurmit Singh, head of the local gurudwara committee.

Indo-Pak Summit 2001: The Complete Coverage

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