Indian finance minister not to attend Saarc ministers meeting in Pakistan

NEW DELHI: India will not send its finance minister Arun Jaitley to attend a meeting of Saarc ministers in Islamabad next week, Indian media reported on Tuesday.

According to the reports, economic affairs secretary Shaktikanta Das will represent India at the Saarc Finance Ministers' meeting instead.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to make the final decision in this regard, which will be followed by a formal announcement.

The Saarc meeting will be held during August 25-26. It will focus on finding ways and means to accelerate process of regional cooperation for non starter South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA).

However, hopes for any major breakthroughs are quite bleak at a time when political tension between nuclear rivals Pakistan and India remains high in the context of growing atrocities by Indian forces in Indian-occupied Kashmir in recent weeks.

Pakistan's Federal Minister for Finance Mohammad Ishaq Dar chaired a meeting at the Finance Division to review the arrangements for the upcoming Saarc meeting, according to the Finance Ministry’s statement issued on Saturday.

Rajnath Singh, who was in Islamabad for an overnight stay to represent his country in the Saarc Interior/Home Ministers Conference earlier this month, left for New Delhi early on the day of the conference, skipping the last session.

While addressing the meet, Rajnath Singh had said, "There should be no glorification or eulogising of terrorists as martyrs."

"There are no good terrorists or bad terrorists. Terrorism is terrorism," Rajnath Singh had said.

After Rajnath's remarks, Pakistan Interior Minister Chaudhary Nisar Ali Khan hitting out at the Indian Home Minister said torturing innocent children and unarmed civilians was terrorism.

He said suppressing freedom struggle was against fundamental human rights.

“No country could crush freedom struggle in the guise of terrorism”, Interior Minister said.

Highly-placed diplomatic sources, later on, told The News that Rajnath raised the issue of calling Burhan Muzaffar Wani as a “martyr” by Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif and came out with a straight threat to Pakistan. 

After losing war of words with Pakistan Interior Minister, Rajnath left for India.