Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has decided not to attend the Non Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit in Egypt next month, apparently to avoid another meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh whose recent blunt public comments appear to have not gone down well with the Pakistani Government.

Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani would lead the Pakistani delegation to the summit in Sharm-el Shaikh on July 15, the Pakistani Foreign Office announced. This came a day after Singh told reporters that he and Zardari would be meeting on the sidelines of the summit.

At the start of their ice-breaking meeting at Yekaterinburg in Russia on Tuesday — the first since the 26/11 terror attack — Singh had told Zardari in full glare of international media that his mandate was limited to telling that Pakistan should not allow its soil to be used for terrorism against India.

It was announced later that the Foreign Secretaries of the two countries would meet to discuss terrorism and then the two leaders would “take stock” of their deliberations in Sharm-el Shaikh.

Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit, who made the announcement about Gilani leading the Pakistani delegation, sought to play down the development. “We said the next meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh would be between the political leadership of the two countries. It was never said whether the President or the Prime Minister would represent Pakistan,” he said.

Pakistan has been represented at the past few NAM summits by former president Pervez Musharraf. Diplomatic and other sources said the move was a reaction to Singh’s remarks, which the pro-establishment daily The News had described as “rude”.

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