AFP, New Delhi :
Prime minister-elect Narendra Modi has invited Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif as well as other South Asian leaders to his swearing-in ceremony next Monday, a spokeswoman for his party told AFP.
Nirmala Sitharaman, from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), said all heads of government from the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) “have been given invitations to be present at Modi’s swearing in.”
Modi is to take the oath as Prime Minister on May 26, ten days after a landslide win for the BJP which secured the first majority by a single party in 30 years.
A senior official from the foreign ministry confirmed that it was examining a proposal to welcome foreign heads of governments, but said that invites had not yet been sent.
“We have not sent any invite yet. There is a proposal but we can’t share the details yet,” the official told AFP.
Sharif has hailed Modi’s “impressive victory” with many diplomats hoping the two men can engineer a thaw in ties between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
Sharif has cited his working relationship with Atal Bihari Vajpayee, India’s last Prime Minister from the BJP, as a reason for optimism, according to diplomatic sources.
In 1999 during Sharif’s second term in power, Vajpayee rode a bus to Lahore to sign a peace accord, raising the prospect of normaliszd ties.
Three months later, however, the countries embarked on the Kargil conflict in Jammu and Kashmir.
