AITA talks with ITF over Pak tie called off: Bhupathi

The teleconference between the All India Tennis Association (AITA) and the International Tennis Federation (ITF) regarding the former's security concerns about playing the Davis Cup Asia Oceania Group 1 tie against Pakistan in Islamabad next month has been cancelled, tennis icon Mahesh Bhupathi said.

The all-important meeting, which was postponed to Tuesday from Monday and was supposed to start from 7 p.m., has now been called off.

"It was cancelled. I just heard from AITA," India's non-playing captain Bhupathi told .

The Davis Cup committee will now meet on Wednesday to discuss on the issue.

"The committee will assess the security concerns and discuss on the whole matter tomorrow in a meeting. They should then let us know by day after tommorrow, we are assuming," AITA Secretary-General Hironmoy Chatterjee told .

Bhupathi was to be part of the conference call which would further decide on the next course of action as to whether the much-talked about tie will be shifted to another venue or not.

India were all set to go to Pakistan before relations between the two countries deteriorated in the aftermath of the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir. The scrapping has turned the state into two Union Territories Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh.

Pakistan's diplomatic ties with India took a beating post the turn of events. ITF has previously turned down India's security concerns to finally settle for a discussion on the matter.

(Debayan Mukherjee can be contacted at debayan.m@.in)

( With inputs from IANS )