DHAKA: As eight South Asian leaders meet in Kathmandu for a regional summit, the focus is on the tension between India and Pakistan.

At the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) meeting, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi is due to hold two-way talks with every country in the volatile region except Pakistan, as neither neighbor is ready to seek talks after 20 civilians were killed in recent fighting along the border in Kashmir.

‘More often than not, India-Pakistan disputes have overshadowed the organization,’ Nepal’s former prime minister, Baburam Bhattarai, wrote in the Republica newspaper.

‘It is now time for India to take the lead.’

Despite a free trade pact since 2006, South Asian nations conduct only 5 percent of their total trade with each other, and there are few transport and power links among them.

‘My vision for our region is a dispute-free South Asia, where, instead of fighting each other, we jointly fight poverty,’ Pakistan’s prime minister Nawaz Sharif said in a speech that acknowledged the grouping’s sparse achievements.

But hopes for a meeting between prime ministers Modi and Sharif to restart talks faded after Sharif told reporters on his plane that ‘the ball is now in India’s court’, according to NDTV.

BDST: 1234 HRS, NOV 26, 2014