Indo-Pak officials to talk first, says Sibal

Echoing External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha’s statement on Thursday, Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal today said the composite dialo...

Echoing External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha’s statement on Thursday, Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal today said the composite dialogue process between India and Pakistan would begin at the level of officials and ‘‘not top-down’’.

Sinha said official-level meetings will precede summit-level talks between the top leadership of India and Pakistan. Spelling out the Indian stand, he said: ‘‘This question has been asked repeatedly. We have responded that summit-level talks between India and Pakistan can take place only when parleys at the lower level are held and there is a meeting of minds and possibility of agreement.’’

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‘‘Our position all along has been that the composite dialogue, when it starts, will be at the official level, whether joint secretary or foreign secretary, that remains to be seen. And then we will move on to the summit. So, we are not going top-bottom this time. It will be bottom-up.’’

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Sibal said too much should not be read into Indian and Pakistani leaders coming face to face at the SAARC Summit in Islamabad in January. ‘‘If Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee goes there, he will be received. There are certain basic protocol requirements. So, to imagine that he will go there and they will not meet is not physically possible,’’ he told a private television channel.

Sibal’s remarks came a day after the Prime Minister said in Lucknow that his itinerary for Pakistan was being prepared and that he would be ‘‘meeting everyone there’’.