ISLAMABAD: Foreign Office has rejected baseless and misleading media posts from Indian journalists attributing the cancellation of the proposed informal SAARC ministerial meeting to Pakistan.
In a statement, Foreign Office Spokesperson Asim Iftikhar Ahmad said this is yet another example of fake news peddled by India and propagated by its pliant media to mislead the international community.
The secretariat of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) informed the grouping that a planned meeting of foreign ministers in New York this week has been cancelled because of a “lack of concurrence” among member states.
An official letter sent by the Saarc secretariat to the foreign ministries of the eight countries said it received a note verbale or unsigned diplomatic correspondence from Nepal’s foreign ministry that stated the informal meeting of foreign ministers, which was to be held on the margins of the UN General Assembly in New York on September 25, “will not take place” because of the “lack of concurrence from all member states”.
The proposed SAARC meeting was canceled after Pakistan’s objections that the annual gathering in New York would be “inappropriate” due to India’s ongoing atrocities in Kashmir as well as the question of legal representation of Afghanistan, according to diplomatic sources here.
The SAARC Council of Foreign Ministers’ meeting, scheduled for September 25, was proposed by Nepal reportedly at India’s behest.
In view of Pakistan’s position agreed by Sri Lanka, Nepal was obliged to cancel the meeting despite India’s urging to hold it.
There has been a question mark over the SAARC meeting because of the status of Afghanistan following the takeover of the country by the Taliban last month. However, social media posts in the Indian press sought to give an impression that Pakistan had insisted that the Taliban government should be represented at the meeting.
The group has been largely moribund since its 19th annual summit, which was to be held in Islamabad in 2016, was cancelled. The strains in India-Pakistan relations have been reflected at the SAARC foreign ministers’ meetings in New York.
