Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will not travel to Pakistan in November for the Saarc Summit. The news has been confirmed to Firstpost by an authoritative source that decision to stay away from visiting Pakistan . The decision against Modi’s attendance was taken weeks before Sunday’s Uri attack by Pakistani terrorists. Post-Uri attack, it will not be possible that Modi would persuade to travel to Islamabad.
Earlier, Afghanistan and Bangladesh had declared their uneasiness to attend the Saarc meeting in Islamabad. In recent weeks, Bangladesh did not attend the Saarc home ministers' conference in Pakistan, and after home minister Rajnath Singh got a cold welcome, finance minister Arun Jaitley excused himself from the meeting of finance ministers.
It has been a natural outcome of developments in recent weeks when Pakistan has adopted a highly aggressive strategy on Kashmir and has been fomenting trouble in the Valley. The Nawaz Sharif government’s refusal to discuss terrorism and instead be narrowly focussed on its pet subject of the Kashmir Valley, its continued role in fomenting terror violence there and its disruptive attitude towards Saarc have convinced the Modi government that the Pakistan visit would be futile.
The Saarc agenda has anyway been sabotaged by Pakistan and it has refused to allow greater integration among nations of South Asia, the world’s most poorly connected region. The Saarc connectivity plan had been sought to be blocked by Pakistan at the Kathmandu summit, but at Modi’s behest all other countries except Pakistan joined it.
On his part, Modi went out of his way to woo Pakistan, but just hours after he flew out of Lahore in January this year, there was an attack on the Pathankot base and it took three days to kill the well-armed terrorists holed up inside. India tried to negotiate with the Sharif government and even hosted a Pakistani team in Pathankot to share inputs on the role of Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorists.
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By Prakriti Neogi
