Manmohan Singh,    Shaukat Aziz

New Delhi : Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz was scheduled to arrive here on Nov. 22 to discuss with his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh the fledgling bilateral peace initiative amid a toughening of stance by both sides over Kashmir.

Aziz, who was making the trip in his capacity as chairman of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) was also expected to hold talks with Prime Minister Singh on the ongoing peace process between the two sides.

Officials said that during his two-day visit, the Pakistani prime minister was to hold talks with Singh on Nov. 23, their first formal meeting.

They are expected to review the progress so far of a dialogue process the two countries had initiated to resolve all outstanding issues, including Jammu and Kashmir, and also discuss new confidence building measures, like cross-border road and rail services between the two countries.

“This (visit) provides an opportunity for the two prime ministers to meet,” Pakistan’s High Commissioner to India Aziz Ahmed Khan said, and noted that this would be the first formal meeting between the two.

He was speaking to reporters after a function at the Vigyan Bhavan conference center here.

Khan said the Pakistani prime minister would arrive here after visiting the Maldives and Sri Lanka. “He has already visited Bangladesh and Bhutan,” he said.

Khan declined comment on Prime Minister Singh’s remarks at a press conference in Srinagar on Nov. 17 on President Pervez Musharraf’s proposal for resolution of the Kashmir dispute.

Singh had said that Musharraf should put his proposals on resolving the Kashmir in a “proper form” and said he was not prepared to respond to “hypothetical questions” on the issue.

Kashmiri sources here said Aziz had invited the leaders of the Hurriyat Conference, a conglomeration of separatist groups in Jammu and Kashmir, for a meeting during his visit here.

A team led by Hurriyat chairman Miwaiz Umar Farooq was also to hold talks with him at the Pakistan high commission here, they said.

While New Delhi has not given permission to leaders of the Hurriyat Conference, a conglomeration of separatist groups in Jammu and Kashmir, to visit Pakistan, it has never stopped them from meeting visiting Pakistani leaders in Delhi.

On the eve of the visit, Prime Minister Singh, visiting Jammu and Kashmir last week, reiterated India’s known stand that there could be no re-drawing of the subcontinent’s map in the search for a solution to the more than five decades-old Kashmir dispute.

He also asserted that India would not succumb to attempts by Pakistan to destabilize Jammu and Kashmir by backing terrorism.

Singh’s comments drew a quick and angry reaction from Islamabad, with President Pervez Musharraf saying that the signals emanating from India were not encouraging. “The vibes that are now coming do not encourage a process of normalization,”

Musharraf was quoted as saying in an interview with AFP news agency in Islamabad on Nov. 18. “Certainly the vibes should be much better than this, that we are moving, that we want to...there ought to be a desire to move forward towards peace,” he said.