This story is from September 16, 2006

Mush steals a march over PM

Arindam Sen Gupta / TNN / Sep 16, 2006, 01:48 IST

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Minutes before PM's aircraft landed at the Jose Marti International Airport, Musharraf's plane had touched down.

HAVANA: The General simply has a great sense of timing. Minutes before PM Manmohan Singh's special aircraft landed at the Jose Marti International Airport here, Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf's plane had touched down.
This meant Singh was in the queue. Musharraf would be received first by the brass band and schoolchildren carrying bouquets before PM went through the same drill.
You could say the General had stolen a march over Singh.This would not have been the case had Air India One carrying Singh touched down at the scheduled time of 6.15 pm.
But it reached 10 minutes late sufficient time for Musharraf to nose ahead. In fact, it was a long string of heads of states and governments landing. Just behind Manmohan were the Thai and Sudanese leaders.

Singh, however, is not the sort who gets ruffled. In any case, as Indian leaders have learnt, at times to their cost, you need yogic equanimity while dealing with the General.
Singh seemed to be learning the game when he was asked, on his way here from Brasilia, how he reacted to Musharraf's statement in Brussels that the ball was in India's court on Kashmir.
Singh paused a bit and then said, "I will not indulge in a public debate on the subject with the president. Our positions are well known to each other.

We will talk business. Let me say, I am looking forward to meeting president Musharraf." The meeting is scheduled for Saturday forenoon (late evening Indian time). It's possible that Singh has noticed also the positive strokes of the General while speaking on Indo-Pak bilateral ties.
Musharraf has acknowledged the importance of the India-promoted twin-track approach something that the Pakistani leader had earlier dismissed as "a distraction".
On Friday, Singh is scheduled to address the NAM in the afternoon. He is also in line for some bilateral meetings, among them with Sri Lanka, Lebanon and Mongolia. But the big day will, of course, be Saturday when he meets Musharraf.

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