MOSCOW: Mr Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan`s Foreign Minister, said yesterday [Nov 25] the chances were `fairly bright` for Indian and Pakistani leaders to meet on Soviet territory soon. He said his Government had accepted a Soviet offer of good offices `unconditionally` President Ayub Khan was ready to `discuss the whole gamut of Indo-Pakistan relations` with Mr Lal Bahadur Shastri, the Indian Prime Minister, at a meeting in the Soviet Union, he said. Mr Bhutto was speaking at a Press conference (partly covered in yesterday`s `Dawn`), after a two-anda-half-hour meeting with Mr Alexei Kosygin, the Soviet Prime Minister, in the Kremlin.

`We hope and we believe that India will cooperate and will respond,` Mr Bhutto said. `If it (the summit meeting) takes place, the prospects are that it will take place as soon a possible.` He said he believed the prospects were `fairly bright for a meeting late this year or early next year`.

Indian sources said after that the Indian Ambassador Mr Triloki Nath Kaul yesterday handed Mr Kosygin a `positive message` from Mr Shastri about the proposed meeting. They said a statement from New Delhi was likely in the next few days. `The ball is entirely in India`s court,` Mr Bhutto said. Agencies [Meanwhile, as reported by agencies from Rawalpindi,] the Sikh leader Master Tara Singh has advocated the formation of a `buffer state between India and Pakistan, in which the Sikhs should enjoy an independent position`. The Sikh leader spelled out his ideas on the future of the Sikhs in the Indian Union and their relationship with Pakistan, the home of their religion, in a series of articles written in the daily `Prabhat` of Jullundur.

He said: `It would be in the interests of the Silchs themselves to remain friendly with both the countries. Such a state would end the IndiaPakistan conflict permanently.