Click to play videoNew Delhi: Afghanistan struck a controversial note on the eve of the SAARC summit with President Hamid Karzai in an interview to the New York Times accusing Pakistan of sheltering Taliban chief Mullah Omar.
Karzai also accused Pakistan of not cooperating in checking cross border movement by the Taliban.
However, hours after his arrival in Delhi, Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri rejected Karzai’s charge. “Mullah Omar is not in Pakistan, he is in Afghanistan,” Kasuri said.
Meanwhile, Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon faced similar rejections from Kasuri.
Islamabad has problems with a treaty for mutual legal assistance, which could complicate long-standing problems over terrorism that again will be raised at the summit.
“We would like to strengthen the conventions against terrorism and a firm resolve will be made to fight against it. It has to be at the top of the SAARC agenda,” External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee affirmed.
Normally, Indo-Pak hostility tends to overshadow SAARC summits. This time, however, the atmosphere has been pleasant even though differences remain over counter-terrorism and South Asian Free Trade Area Agreement (SAFTA). But at the same time shadow of other bilateral disputes hangs heavy on the 14the SAARC summit.
Meanwhile, Nepal Prime Minister sought Indian help in resolving the problem of Bhutanese refugees in Nepal.
He was politely advised to sort it out with Bhutan but India acknowledged Nepal's request to tighten border security and got some reassurance on it.
“Some things are going wrong because of the open border. I think it should be tightened,” Nepal Foreign Minister Shahana Pradhan said.
There maybe no progress with Bangladesh on tackling Jihadi and north-east separatist groups based there but Dhaka is now willing to re-look the pipeline from Myanmar transiting its territory en route to India.
But other major issues remain like the lack of progress towards a community and little movement on SAFTA but this summit could also show that despite the suspicion and anger over terrorist attacks, terrorism itself could possibly emerge as a binding force for the region.
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