No Sushma-Qureshi meeting at UN

No meeting between External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has been scheduled yet on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) session later this month, it is learnt.

Sources here said that foreign ministers of the member countries of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) will have an informal meeting on the sidelines of the UNGA.

"But no separate meeting between our External Affairs Minister and the Pakistan Foreign Minister has been finalised," a source in the know of things said.

Speculations have been rife about resumption of talks between the two South Asian nuclear neighbours ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi called his Pakistani counterpart Imran Khan after the latter took oath of office last month.

It is learnt that the Saarc Summit that Imran Khan wants to be held in Pakistan is also unlikely.

"India's stand on the Saarc Summit is very clear -- there can be no talks till Pakistan cuts down support to terrorism," the source said.

Following the cross-border terror attack at an Indian Army base in Jammu and Kashmir in September 2016, the Saarc Summit that was to be held in Islamabad later that year had to be cancelled as other member states of the bloc joined India in boycotting it.

--IANS

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