'India and Pakistan hurting regional ties'

The last Saarc summit was held in 1998

Sri Lanka's Foreign Minister, Lakshman Kadirgamar, has blamed the tension between India and Pakistan for holding up a regional summit.

Mr Kadirgamar said the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) was "handicapped" as the two South Asian nations had failed to sort out their differences.

"The problem between India and Pakistan has been around with us for 50 years," Mr Kadirgamar said.

"But in the absence of political inputs at appropriate level, the necessary impetus for taking far-reaching decisions is not there," he said.

There is a vast reservoir of goodwill among all the parties in our region which will propel the member states concerned to get together

Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar

Saarc was set up in 1985 to promote economic and social ties among Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

In November 1999, its summit in Nepal was cancelled following an escalation in clashes between India and Pakistan.

Saarc meeting

Sri Lanka, which holds the rotating chairmanship of Saarc, is hosting a three-day meeting of senior Saarc officials.

The meeting will focus on less controversial issues such as cross-border cultural exchanges.

Mr Kadirgamar said the meeting did not mean a full-fledged Saarc ministerial summit would be announced soon, but asked member states not to be despondent.

"A sense of scepticism or cynicism about the future of Saarc must not be permitted to spread," he was quoted as saying by the French news agency AFP.

"There is a vast reservoir of goodwill among all the parties of our region which, in time, will propel the member states concerned to get together, to bury their differences and move Saarc along."