Pak snubs India, sends junior officials to attend SAARC meet in Delhi

New Delhi: The SAARC meeting held in Delhi on Thursday was graced by top diplomats, but Pakistan was the sole nation, that chose to send junior officials to the high-profile event. The move is seen as a bid to undermine India as tensions continue to simmer between the two countries over the situation in Kashmir and the more recent Uri attack.

According to a Hindustan Times report, Pakistan deliberately decided against sending any senior diplomats to the two-day meeting which is being hosted on the recommendation of the SAARC Ministerial Declaration on Cooperation in Combating Terrorism.

Pakistan’s Director General of Intelligence Bureau, Aftab Sultan, was supposed to be at the Delhi meet, but the country decided to send counselor-level officers instead of him.

A statement from the Home Ministry also confirmed that while all countries, i.e, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Maldives sent their top diplomats; Pakistan was the only nation which sent junior officers.

The aim of the meeting is to strengthen the SAARC Anti-Terror Mechanism. The first meeting was held in New Delhi in February, 2012.

The agenda of the meeting includes functioning of SAARC Terrorist Offences Monitoring Desk (STOMD) and the SAARC Drug Offences Monitoring Desk (SDOMD), countering terrorism and strengthening anti-terrorism mechanisms in SAARC, intelligence sharing and police cooperation, human resource development and relationship building, combating corruption and cyber crimes, among others.