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Hafiz Saeed’s detention: Ground cleared for Singh and Musharraf to meet

By Iftikhar Gilani

NEW DELHI: Lashkar-e-Taiba founder Hafiz Mohammad Saeed’s house arrest in Lahore could pave the way for a meeting between Pakistani President Gen Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh on the sidelines of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit to be held in Havana in the middle of September.

Indian officials see the LT founder’s month-long detention as a ‘welcome development’.

After dialogue between the foreign secretaries of the two countries in Dhaka earlier this month, it is believed that a senior Pakistani official visited India recently, and met an Indian interlocutor to prepare the ground for the summit meeting. Sources said that after the Mumbai blasts, when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh approved ‘punitive measures’ against Pakistan, he directed that ‘these should not end up in permanent hostility’.

Indian officials said Sayeed’s arrest was a welcome move because Indians believed that a resumption of dialogue was not acceptable if practical steps were not taken in Islamabad to control terrorists allegedly operating from Pakistan. Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran said in Dhaka that Hafiz Saeed, chief of the Jamaatud Dawa, and Syed Salahuddin, chief of the Hizbul Mujahideen, were roaming free in Pakistan.

Sayeed and Salahuddin’s arrests were only ‘some of the actions that Pakistan could take easily’, said Saran while referring to Pakistan’s claims that it was doing all it could to fight terrorism. Officials, however, brushed aside reports that India had given a ‘non-paper’ to Pakistan, envisaging the return of Jammu and Kashmir to its pre-1953 status, which granted it autonomy in most subjects.

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