Asserting that there are some sections in the Pakistan establishment who want to “scuttle” the India-Pak talks and are ratcheting up anti-India activities thereby, pushing India to call off NSA-level talks.
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Three Indian Kashmiri separatist leaders were briefly placed under house arrest yesterday in the region’s main city of Srinagar, but were later released in what Indian media have branded a government flip-flop on the contentious issue. He expressed the hope that India would allow Kashmiri leaders to attend the event and meet Pakistan’s National Security Adviser Sartaj Aziz.
Islamabad, however, irked New Delhi by inviting leaders of Hurriyat Conference as well as other separatist leaders of Kashmir in the High Commission of Pakistan in New Delhi for a meeting with Aziz ahead of his parleys with Doval. “These were the times that the government of India should have taken steps to send a strong message to Pakistan“, he said. “But, unilateral imposition of new conditions and distortion of the agreed agenda can not be the basis for going forward”, he added.
“I am deeply disappointed with Foreign Secretary Jaishankar and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, they have completely messed up the foreign policy”, said Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit.
Pakistan’s foreign secretary had conveyed to the Indian high commissioner here that India’s “advise” to Aziz was not acceptable to Islamabad. Even more significantly…the Pakistani High Commissioner invited Hurriyat representatives to consult with the visiting NSA.
The Information Minister Pervez Rasheed has said that the Indian demand that the national security advisor Sartaj Aziz should not meet Kashmiri leaders is an excuse to wriggle out of its commitment to hold talks with Pakistan.
Indian officials say the Pakistani invite to Kashmiri separatists was designed to scuttle the NSA talks and follows a pattern of the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment. “NSA-level talks must be saved from its expected death”, said Aurangzeb Khan, an analyst.
“In fact, Pakistan has always demonstrated its belief in the dialogue process and is prepared to engage in meaningful talks with India, to resolve all outstanding issues that have bedeviled relations between the two countries, for the past many decades”, he said. This was the only agenda set…The insistence on meeting Hurriyat as a precondition is also a complete departure from the Ufa understanding. “Both sides are in contact with regard to finalisation of agenda….”
About a dozen militant groups have been fighting since 1989 for either the independence of the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir or its merger with Pakistan.
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He said that between the Ufa and the NSA talks, “so much terrorism has taken place”, including terror attacks in Punjab after 20 years and border firings in which several civilians have been killed.
