“If India has a shortcoming, it is capable of looking after it”, top official sources said.
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Talking to the media persons in Islamabad on Tuesday, he said the former foreign minister had gone to India for the launch of his book and he was the guest of that country.
Kasuri, who was the foreign minister when General Musharraf was engaged in a dialogue with the then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, said Pakistan had handed over addresses of terrorist camps operating in Kashmir as part of its deal to bring peace to the Valley.
“We noted with concern attempts to disrupt functions organized in respect of Pakistani personalities on visit to India”. “The issue is that there has to be a recognition that terrorism can not be an instrument of statecraft and you can not say it was only Gurudaspur attack, why are you overreacting or an attack on BSF, why are you overreacting”.
Kasuri was quoted saying to Pakistan’s leading English daily. They did not dispute it. But obviously their domestic politics took them in a different direction from the Ufa. “We were still open to having NSA-level talks and there was no lack of clarity on that”, the sources said.
“It was clearly stated in Ufa that a composite dialogue will be carried out but the environment should be good and that the first thing to discuss would be terrorism along with other issues”.
Undeterred by the violent protest, the organisers, including the ORF, a foreign policy think-tank, yesterday went ahead with the book launch function in Mumbai which was held amid tight security following threats of disruption by the pro-Hindutva party. “But Pakistan is not doing anything to stop terrorism neither they are showing any interest to stop it”, Bansal said.
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After a hectic day of back-toback engagements, Kasuri said India’s insistence that Pakistan is to be blamed for everything that is going wrong between the two countries is proving to be counter-productive and snuffing out any opportunity for a rapprochement.
