Sri Lankan president meets Indian leaders

The Sri Lankan president, Chandrika Kumaratunga -- who's visiting India -- has discussed efforts to revive the regional body, SAARC, with the prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee and the foreign minister, Jaswant Singh.

Their talks also covered the twenty-year-old civil war in Sri Lanka.

According to an Indian spokesman, the leaders decided that the SAARC standing committee of senior officials would meet in May.

Mrs Kumaratunga is the current SAARC chairperson, but has been unable to convene a summit since July 1998.

She's expected to try to persuade India to agree that the group's eleventh summit should go ahead -- Delhi has previously blocked it in protest at the military coup in Pakistan.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service ***