Clinton offers to hold talks with Gujral

United States President Bill Clinton has offered to have bilateral discussions with Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral during the Indian leader's day-long visit to the United Nations on September 23.

Gujral is scheduled to be in New York between September 29 and 30, to address the UN General Assembly session. Efforts are being made to advance his visit to coincide with Clinton's visit to the Big Apple.

This will be the first opportunity for Gujral to meet Clinton. The last Indian prime minister to see Clinton was P V Narasimha Rao. Their meeting took place in Washington in May 1994.

A similar offer was made to Islamabad which Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief has accepted. He will be in New York on September 22 to be in time for a meeting with Clinton.

Originally, Sharief was to address the General Assembly on October 2. Since Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has decided against attending the General Assembly, the slot reserved for her on September 22 has been turned over to Pakistan, sources say.

UN officicals maintain it would not be difficult to find a similar early slot for Gujral if he can readjust his schedule and reach New York on September 22, instead of September 29, as planned.

A possibility of a Gujral-Sharief meeting is also rated high if both prime ministers, as expected, are in New York around the same time.

This will be their second meeting after assuming office. They had their first meeting in Male, the Maldives, during the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit in May.

Though the agenda for the India-US talks includes the problems of nuclear and missile proliferation, the Clinton-Gujral meeting, if it takes place, will be more of a get-to-know-each-other nature, according to informed sources.

Such an exercise is necessary as Clinton has already announced his plan to visit India and Pakistan next year.

He will be the fourth American president to visit India. Before him, Dwight Eisenhower, John F Kennedy and Jimmy Carter had toured the country. Carter did not include Pakistan in his visit to South Asia in January 1978, unlike the other two.

UNI

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