Addu City (Maldives), Nov. 9 (ANI): External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna has said that terror continues to be the focal point of the dialogue process between India and Pakistan.
"Terror continues to be the focal point of India's dialogue process with Pakistan. So when we discuss bilateral issues we certainly factor terror and the various ramifications of what terror has brought to us," said Krishna.
"Well, the ground reality as she (Pakistan Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar) sees it, she perceives it and the ground reality as we perceive it, I think there should be some matching point between two, so we are working towards that," he added.
Krishna, who met his Pakistani counterpart Hina Rabbani Khar earlier today said the dialogue with Pakistan is a continuous process.
Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh is meeting his Pakistani counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani on Gan Island in Maldives on Thursday on the margins of the 17th SAARC summit.
The talks between the two leaders assume importance, as the meeting would be a follow up of their last interaction in Thimphu, Bhutan.
The central theme of the 17th SAARC summit, building bridges has been selected as a visionary thought to link past, present and future of SAARC without undermining the achievements of 26 years of building SAARC.
The XVII SAARC Summit takes place in Addu City, in the southern atolls of the Maldives, situated in the Southern Hemisphere. This is the third time that Maldives is hosting a SAARC Summit; it did so previously in 1997 (Ninth Summit) and 1990 (Fifth Summit).
The summit covers both the direct implication of connectivity between the SAARC Member States, and also the conceptual connotations of connecting peoples of the SAARC region in all facets, including social, economic, cultural, developmental aspects. This harmonizes with the observance of the current decade as the "SAARC Decade of Intra-Regional Connectivity".
The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) was created in 1985 in Dhaka with seven members, as an expression of the region"s collective decision to evolve a regional cooperative framework. he two-day summit is also expected to stress the need to have people-to-people contact in the region as one fifth of the world population lives in the SAARC region.
Presently, there are eight member countries in SAARC namely Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Maldives, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. It also has nine Observers, namely China, EU, Iran, Republic of Korea, Australia, Japan, Mauritius, Myanmar and USA. By Praful Kumar Singh (ANI)
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