Gandhi, Bhutto Stress Peace at S. Asia Summit

Indian leader Rajiv Gandhi on Thursday hailed the prospect of an end to enmity between India and Pakistan, and Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto urged South Asian nations to work together for peace and prosperity.

At the opening session of a three-day summit of seven South Asian leaders, Gandhi paid tribute to Pakistan’s November elections that brought Bhutto to power after 11 years of military rule.

Bhutto, in her address to the fourth annual summit of the South Asian Assn. for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), said her country hopes cooperation “will increase and take concrete shape and that our region should become an area of peace, security, prosperity and cooperation.”

The three-day summit is dominated by the prospect of at least two private meetings between Gandhi, 44, and Bhutto, 35, leaders of a generation with few memories of the bloodshed caused by the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947.

Pakistan and India have fought three wars since then and Gandhi is the first Indian prime minister to make a working visit to Pakistan since his grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, in 1960.

Bhutto did not mention Pakistan’s ties with India, concentrating on issues relevant to all those attending--the leaders and senior officials of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

“The truth is that our people face the same common problems--poverty, disease, slums and ignorance--and it is to the vanquishing of these enemies that we should direct all our efforts,” she said.

Gandhi, too, said it is time for cooperation in the region, home to a fifth of the world’s people, millions of them among the poorest.

Bhutto called on association member nations to consider ways of cutting arms spending and to seek curbs on the arms race and the danger of nuclear war.