Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday reached Bhutan to attend the SAARC Summit during which he may meet his Pakistani counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani.
Singh, during his two-day stay, is also expected to hold interactions with leaders from other member countries.
"The winds of change are blowing across the world. South Asia cannot be immune to the trend of greater integration, both at the regional and global levels," the Prime Minister had said last night.
He said the Summit would provide the countries of this region an opportunity to collectively reflect on "where we are, what more we can do together to meet the developmental aspirations of our people, and how South Asia can play its rightful role in the international arena.
Singh said he was looking forward to holding bilateral discussions with his Bhutanese counterpart Jigmi Y. Thinley.
"I also look forward to my meetings with leaders of other SAARC countries," the Prime Minister said, without elaborating.
India and Pakistan's leaders were due to meet on Wednesday at a regional summit in Bhutan, but a spy scandal dented already slim hopes that they might find a way back to substantive peace talks.
Officials in New Delhi said that an Indian diplomat working at their embassy in Islamabad had been arrested on suspicion of passing secrets to Pakistani intelligence services, AFP said.
The incident is likely to further sour the atmosphere between the two nations ahead of a possible one-on-one meeting between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani.
The two prime ministers will attend the opening on Wednesday afternoon of the 16th summit of the eight-nation South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in the Bhutanese capital Thimphu.
Indian officials had floated the prospect of a two-way meeting on the sidelines to discuss a long-running water dispute, but Pakistan has made it clear that it wants a formal, open-ended dialogue.
"It's time for India to make up its mind whether it wants to engage or not.... Engagement is the only way forward," Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi told a TV channel on Tuesday.
"We need to go beyond a handshake," Qureshi said, referring to Singh and Gilani's cursory exchange of pleasantries at a 47-nation summit on nuclear security in Washington earlier this month.
India broke off all dialogue with Pakistan after the 2008 Mumbai attacks, which killed at least 166 people and were blamed by New Delhi on Pakistan-based militants.
Contact was tentatively resumed at a meeting of top foreign ministry officials in Delhi in February, but India insisted the resumption of proper dialogue depended on Pakistan's bringing to justice those responsible for the Mumbai carnage.
Qureshi said it was time for India to move forward and stop demonising Pakistan.
"We have to accept terrorism is a common challenge. It's not us and you, it's a collective effort," he said.
Qureshi attended a meeting of SAARC foreign ministers on Tuesday along with Indian counterpart S.M. Krishna, but the latter refused to even confirm that Singh and Gilani would meet separately. "Let's wait until the prime minister comes," he told reporters.
During the foreign ministers' gathering, Krishna called for all SAARC nations to "rally against the forces of terrorism".
"The South Asian region is particularly afflicted by this menace," he said, without mentioning Pakistan by name.
SAARC groups Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka and was formed in 1985 to boost development and raise the living standards of poverty-stricken people in a region home to a fifth of humanity.
But 25 years and 15 summits later, it has achieved very little, largely due to the volatile relationship between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, say critics.
The bitter rivals have fought three wars since the subcontinent's 1947 partition and remain at loggerheads over the region of Kashmir.
They are also locked in a struggle for influence in Afghanistan, which joined SAARC in 2007, adding a conflict involving the United States to the group's headaches.
For SAARC's smaller members, the India-Pakistan dynamic gets in the way of their efforts to leverage the group's potential in other areas, including trade, development, water-sharing and environmental controls.
Bhutan is hosting the summit for the very first time and the tiny Himalayan kingdom wants to focus on climate change.
Meanwhile, in an apparent bid to drive a wedge between Indian government and the ruling party, Pakistan has said that "well-meaning" Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was keen to normalise ties with it but "elements in Congress" did not support him.
Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi criticised India for refusing to have "meaningful" talks till Pakistan acts against terrorism, saying the contention had been "dragged too long" and "nobody is buying that anymore".
In an interview to PTI in Thimphu, he insisted that Pakistan has moved "considerably" against perpetrators of Mumbai attacks and the reply to India's dossiers recently was "not to gain time" but to get additional information so that the case can be taken to its logical conclusion.
Dialogue "is the only sensible thing to do. Two prime ministers of this region, two important countries of this region, have to sit and work out (bilateral issues)," said Qureshi who is here to attend the two-day SAARC Summit that got off today.
He said Pakistan was always ready for dialogue but "it seems India is not yet ready, perhaps because of domestic political considerations".
Elaborating on his contention, he said, "I am convinced that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh wants to move forward".
"I think, he (Singh) is a well meaning individual, he has a vision, he wants to leave a legacy behind, he is an academic, he is an economist. He understands the benefits that can accrue to the region if there is normalisation between two important players of the SAARC region. But it seems that elements within the Congress are not giving him the support he should be given".
He, however, did not identify the "elements" within the Congress whom he was referring to.
The Pakistan Foreign Minister said both India and Pakistan have recognised that dialogue is the only way forward and. "If that is so, how can we have dialogue not engagement? Pakistan has never shied from the engagement. We have said we are ready".
On India's emphasis that there can be no meaningful dialogue till Pakistan takes credible action against cross-border terrorism, Qureshi said, "That has been dragged too long, nobody is buying that anymore because Pakistan has moved considerably forward on that score on the perpetrators of Mumbai".
He said seven of the perpetrators of Mumbai attacks have been arrested and the trial is going on.
"You got to recognise that... What you are not realising that Pakistan today is in a different state of mind. Pakistan has woken up to the challenge of terrorism. Pakistan is a victim of terrorism," Qureshi said.
"You are talking of Mumbai, we have had many Mumbais in all the major cities of Pakistan. Innocent lives have been lost like innocent lives were lost in Mumbai," he said.
When pointed out that India was unhappy that Pakistan was only targeting Taliban and not groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, Qureshi claimed, "We do not differentiate. We are not differentiating between acts of terrorism. An act of terrorism is an act of terrorism, period".
When his attention was drawn to LeT chief Hafiz Saeed against whom India wants action, he cryptically said, "same old beaten track".
He said Saeed was arrested twice by Pakistan government but courts let him off "because in the eyes of the judicial process, the evidence against him was not strong enough to keep him locked up. That is a legal process. You have an independent judiciary, so do we".
Asked whether Pakistan was making any efforts to collect evidence against Saeed in connection with terror activities, Qureshi said, "Pakistan has, is and will continue to try and collect evidence against any terrorist. We do not want our soil to be used against anyone".
Queried whether it meant that even Saeed would not be allowed to use Pakistani soil against India, he repeated, "anyone... Anyone means anyone".
He said that by "disengaging," India was sending out a message to the terrorists "that you control the agenda, by one act, you can scuttle the whole process".
Qureshi also reminded India about the "agreement" that the peace process, started in 2004, is "irreversible and acts of terrorism will not impede the peace process".
Maintaining that India was not "fully recalling" that "agreement", he said, "understand the spirit behind that, recognise the changed situation, recognise that terrorism is a common challenge".
He said that "harping on the same string, it seems, is not going to pay off".
Asked about Pakistan's demand for handing over of Ajmal Kasab, the lone terrorist held during Mumbai attacks, Qureshi refused to comment, saying the matter was sub-judice. PTI
