Albright To Visit India, Pakistan

US secretary of state Madeleine Albright yesterday formally accepted an invitation to visit India later this year as part of a trip that will also include a visit to Pakistan. This would be the first trip to India and Pakistan by a US secretary of state in more than a decade.

She met Indias finance minister P Chidambaram, on the fringes of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean) meeting and was formally invited to visit India, state department spokesman Nicholas Burns told reporters. He said a date has not been set but the trip is expected later in 1997.

 

In another development, the European Union in a statement issued here at the Asean Regional Forum (ARF), yesterday, warned against an arms race in Asia and urged holdouts to accede to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

The EU notes with concern that military spending in the region is rising steadily, Luxembourg foreign minister Jacques Poos, whose country holds the EU presidency, said in the statement issued at the one-day forum on security hosted by the Asean with the groups major partners in attendance.

Worldwide, 48 per cent of all military equipment is being purchased by countries of the region, he said. European countries only represent 18 percent of worldwide military purchases, a significant drop compared to only a few year ago. The EU hopes that military spending in the Asia-Pacific region can be stabilised if not reversed, in order to avoid a negative effect on the region.

The climate of confidence that the ARF has managed to install in the Asia-Pacific region must not be jeopardised, Poos said, and called on all states which have not signed to do so and ratify the CTBT at the earliest possible date.

On the US secretary of states visit, state department spokesman Burns said that Albright had said several months ago that she would like to visit India and Pakistan and has already accepted an invitation from Pakistan.

During her talks with the finance minister, Albright congratulated India and Pakistan on their recent moves to reduce tensions between their countries with high-level meetings and she encouraged them to continue those discussions, Burns added.

Albrights father, Czech intellectual Josef Korbel, has written a book on Kashmir and has long wanted to visit India.