Indo-Pak anti terrorism meeting to be held next week

To address the grave terrorism issue in the subcontinent, the delegates from India and Pakistan are going to schedule the third round meeting of the Anti Terror Mechanism (ATM) in Islamabad on June 24, three day ahead of Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi’s visit to India.

Pakistani Foreign Office in this regard released a brief statement on Tuesday quoting, “The third meeting of the Pakistan-India Joint Anti-Terror Mechanism will be held in Islamabad on June 24.”

“This mechanism has been established to help the two countries to prevent terrorist acts on either country’s soil. It is a two-way mechanism and can be used to share information and to cooperate in investigations on the basis of specific information,” office added.

“Islamabad has always maintained that it approaches these meetings with a positive mindset,” said Pakistani Foreign office in the release.

This time Indian think tanks are estimating that new democrat government will be more responsive in the anti-terrorism talk and meeting will not fail as per earlier held. In the first two meeting, India had asked information to Pakistan regarding the prime suspects of Ajmer blast, Hyderabad blast, Samjhuta Express blast, serial blast in Mumbai Railway Stations and many cross border linkage of other several attacks, but Pak always averted most of the queries.

This time, India can also add the query about recent Jaipur blast, which indicates that cross border terrorism, is still on the peak and there was no signal to be end despite of earlier two round anti-terrorism meeting.

From the Indian side, additional secretary, political and international organisations in MEA, Vivek Katju will lead the talking while from Pakistani side Masood Khalid, additional secretary, Asia Pacific will hold the chair.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on September 16, 2006 in Havana during Non-Aligned Movement summit had mutually decided to set up the mechanism to eliminate terrorism from both the countries, while Indian External Affair Minister Pranab Mukherjee in his Pakistan visit initiated to revive the composite dialogue process over anti-terror mechanism.

The last meeting was held in New Delhi on October 22, 2007.