Chidambaram, Rehman Malik travel to Bhutan on same flight

THIMPHU: Home Minister P Chidambaram and his Pakistani counterpart Rehman Malik today travelled on the same flight to attend a SAARC ministerial meeting in Bhutan, but it is not yet clear whether they had a chance encounter.

Both ministers took the same Druk Air commercial flight from Delhi to Paro, 56 km from the capital of this Himalayan nation, to attend the 4th meeting of the SAARC Interior/Home Ministers here tomorrow.

The speculation here is rife whether Chidambaram and Malik had bilateral discussions on the flight or just exchanged pleasantries.

So far no one-to-one meeting has been fixed between the two leaders but Indian officials indicated that Chidambaram was not averse to a meeting with Malik to raise India's concern on several issues.

If the two leaders indeed meet, this will be the second one-to-one interaction between them after their first such encounter in Islamabad last year on the sidelines of the 3rd meeting of the SAARC Interior/Home Ministers.

The two leaders may discuss about the progress made in Pakistan in efforts to bring the perpetrators of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks to justice, existence of terror infrastructure in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and continuous attempts made by militants to infiltrate across the border

During his transit stay in New Delhi, on his way to Bhutan, Malik expressed his best wishes to "Indian brothers and sisters".

"We all want peace and nothing but peace for coming generations," he tweeted.