India offers to help Pak to conduct rescue in Siachen

New Delhi, Apr 8 (ANI): The Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, on Sunday offered assistance to Pakistan to find survivors after an avalanche engulfed a Pakistani Army camp in Siachen Glacier.

The Pakistani military relaunched its rescue efforts to find survivors on Sunday, as all 135 soldiers are feared dead.

No survivors had been found on Saturday after an all-day search involving more than 150 Pakistani soldiers.

"The PM mentioned that he had heard the news about the avalanche, which caused the feared death of a very large number of soldiers and said, if there was something humanitarian that was required of us, we would be happy to be of assistance," said Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai after the meeting between Dr. Singh and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.

"The President thanked PM for this and said they would check and if there was any requirement, they would come back to us," he added.

Zardari, who arrived here on Sunday for his daylong visit to offer prayers at the shrine of Sufi saint Khwaja Moninuddin Chisti, flew back to Rawalpindi this evening.

Zardari, who prayed at the Sufi shrine here along with his 23-year-old son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari amidst tight security, offered a grant of Rs. five crores on behalf of his government for the shrine.

Both Zardari and his son Bilawal Bhutto offered 'chadars' at the dargah.

"The soulful happiness that I have experienced at this holy place is beyond explanation. I pray to Allah to make life easy for the entire humanity," Zardari wrote in a diary at the dargah.

Zardari had earlier visited the Sufi saint's shrine in 2005, with his wife, former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto.

Earlier in the day, Zardari had very fruitful and constructive talks with Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh during his stopover in Delhi.

Both the sides expressed satisfaction with today's talks, and showed keen interest in finding practical, pragmatic solutions to all issues. The two leaders in their discussions noted that there had been steady progress in the dialogue process, which was restarted last year.

Zardari also invited the Indian Prime Minister to visit Pakistan, which the latter happily accepted.

New Delhi had suspended the peace process between the two sides after the commando-style militant attacks in India's commercial capital Mumbai in 2008, by Pakistan-based militants, which caused the death of 166 people.

India and Pakistan, which have fought three wars since their independence from British rule in 1947, have been slowly trying to repair relations and agreed to resume formal peace talks broken off in wake of the Mumbai attack in 2008. (ANI)