Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Finance Minister Ishaq Dar has started lobbying to ensure that Indian Finance Minster Arun Jaitley come to Islamabad for the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) meeting. Sources in the Ministry said that Finance Minister Ishaq Dar wants the presence of the Indian Finance Minister in this conference, which is going to be held on 25thAugust this year as India is the main member of SAARC forum.

Uncertainty is prevailing regarding the visit of Indian Finance Minister after the Home Minster Conference which was held in first week of August in Islamabad wherein the Indian Minister Raj Nath boycotted the meeting due to remarks made by Interior Minister Chaudhary Nisar on the Kashmir issue.

Source told this scribe that Dar had phoned the SAARC’s Finance Ministers few days ago to invite them to the conference. The Indian Government has not confirmed Jaitley’s participation. A source said if the Indian government does not confirm the taking part of Indian FM in SAARC Conference, then Pakistan will use diplomatic channels to persuade India to make sure her representation in this conference is guaranteed.

SAARC Development Fund(SDF) would be the main agenda of the event, which would be presented by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar as a chairman of the forum. It is worth mentioning here that SDF would have three financing windows: Social, Economic and Infrastructure. Social Window shall primarily fund projects, inter alia, on poverty alleviation, social development focusing on education; health; human resources development; support to venerable/disadvantaged segments of the society; funding needs of communities, mirco-enterprises, and rural infrastructure development.

The Infrastructure Window shall primarily be utilised to fund projects in areas such as energy, power, transportation, telecommunications, environment, tourism and other infrastructure areas. On the other hand, as per Indian media, India’ Finance Minister Arun Jaitely is unlikely to attend the conference because “India is unhappy with the way Islamabad treated Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh”

However, the final decision will be made by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Reportedly Indian government is not happy with the treatment meted out to its home minister Rajnath Singh who earlier participated in SAARC Home Ministers’ Conference hosted by Islamabad on August 3.

Finance Ministers of SAARC countries- which includes India, Pakistan, Nepal, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh- should participate in the conference next week. There is no final decision on participation of India’s minister Arun Jaitely as yet. However, media reports speculate that Jaitely is unlikely to attend the conference.