Old school report adds new celebration for Indian PM's birth

LINK : http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040927/323/f3dgk.html


NEW DELHI, (AFP) - A meeting with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf brought an unexpected birthday present for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Singh readily admitted to being unsure about his date of birth after his mother died young. His official birthday became the day he entered school, September 26.

But Musharraf helped clear up some of the uncertainty on Friday in New York on the sideliness of the UN General Assembly when he handed over school reports from the Indian leader's early days in what is today Pakistan.

"According to school records, I am entering my 72nd year," on September 26, Singh told reporters aboard his flight home via Geneva on Sunday.

"I really don't know my birthday. This (September 26) is the date mentioned in my school records," he told the Press Trust of India.

"I have no confirmed indication from my parents that this is really my date of birth," the economist added. The same date, the day he began at school, had over the years become his seldom-celebrated birthday.

Reporters persuaded a reluctant Singh to cut a fruit cake on the flight to celebrate.

Singh's aides had told the travelling press that being an intensely shy and private person, he would not be marking his birthday,

The prime minister said Musharraf had also given him a picture of Gah village, now in Pakistan's Punjab province, and another picture of the school there where he studied before the division of the sub-continent in 1947.

Singh, who studied at Oxford and Cambridge universities in England, was due to return to New Delhi later Monday.