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India rules out PM, Musharraf meeting in Almaty

India on Friday ruled out any meeting between Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf on the sidelines of a security conference in Kazakhstan next week.

Vajpayee, however, would hold bilateral talks with Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Jiang Zemin.

Putin, who has offered to help in defusing the standoff between New Delhi and Islamabad, is likely to separately meet Musharraf during the 16-nation first summit of Conference on Interaction and Confidence Build Measures in Asia (CICA) on June four.

"There is no question of Vajpayee meeting Musharraf. There is no possibility of a Tashkent II," Special Secretary in the External Affairs Ministry R M Abhyankar said.

After the 1965 Indo-Pak conflict, then Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri had met Pakistan military ruler Ayub Khan in Tashkent.

On a meeting between Vajpayee and Putin, he said, "Putin will be in Almaty. There is a desire on our part and as well as Putin's part to meet."

Efforts were also on to schedule a meeting between the prime minister and Jiang, which will be the first between the two leaders, he said.

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