DHAKA: A brief meeting between prime minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif appears to have salvaged a summit of South Asian leaders, with all eight countries clinching a last-minute deal to create a regional electricity grid.

Thursday’s pact, to be signed at the summit’s closing ceremony, will buttress Modi’s ambition for South Asia to become a viable economic counterweight to China, which has made sweeping inroads in the region.

‘Yes, the electricity agreement will be signed,’ Nepal’s foreign minister Mahendra Bahadur Pandey told the media, as the leaders emerged from a mountain retreat outside the Nepali capital of Kathmandu.

Modi and Pakistan’s prime minister Nawaz Sharif shook hands at the retreat, Pandey said, but gave no details. Until that point in the summit, the leaders of the two rivals had cold-shouldered each other, reports The Times of India.

BDST: 2010 HRS, NOV 27, 2014