New Delhi feels that Islamabad has gone back on the Ufa agreement as “some forces” in that country did not want the talks to go forward.
Advertisement
Hardened positions on both sides have cast a shadow on the talks but neither side has called them off so far.
NC leader Farooq Abdullah today urged separatist leaders not to meet Pakistan NSA Sartaj Aziz during his visit to India for talks with his Indian counterpart so that the two countries can find a way of ending hostilities along the borders in Jammu and Kashmir. But Pakistan is unwilling to relent.
Reiterating India’s stand, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh said, “We are firm on our stand that whatever talks are held with Pakistan should only be on terrorism”.
As uncertainty looms large over whether talks between Indian and Pakistani National Security Advisers will take place, the government has finalised the venue and made all preparations to host the guests. It then proposed an agenda that was in variance completely with what the two Prime Ministers had agreed upon in UFA. “It’s so obvious that Ufa & now these planned NSA talks are under global pressure with both Ind & Pak hoping the other will pull out, (sic)” he tweeted.
The message was conveyed to the Indian High Commissioner by Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry. This provocative action was completely in consonance with Pakistan’s desire to evade its commitment at Ufa to engage in a substantive discussion on terrorism.
“Such a meeting would not be in keeping with the spirit and intent of the Ufa understanding to jointly work to combat terrorism”.
It may be remembered that the Pakistan Prime Minister had received a hostile reaction to his joint statement with the Indian Prime Minister because of the absence of the “K” word in the statement.
The intimation concerning the timing of the assembly was conveyed to Geelani whilst India declared on Friday that “unilateral imposition of latest circumstances and distortion of the agreed agenda can’t be the idea for going ahead” with the NSA degree talks with Pakistan however stopped in need of calling off the dialogue.
The move came after the PCB’s 37th BoG meeting in Lahore on Tuesday which saw no cricketer present for the first time in its history after former Test spinner Iqbal Qasim was withdrawn by his parent body National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) following his retirement. India is ready for talks. Now it is up to them (Pakistan)… Pakistan said it wanted a dialogue without any precondition.
The Hurriyat Conference, nevertheless, says that their talks with Pakistan have been “nothing new” and that the BJP-led central authorities’s strategy on Kashmir was unacceptable.
While India has sought to nuance its position by blaming only the Pakistan army for attempts to sabotage the NSA talks, Pakistani diplomats here said there was complete unanimity within the Pakistani establishment that it couldn’t give in to any “blackmail” by India, especially over an issue related to J&K.
Advertisement
“We have sent invitations for talks over dinner to all the Kashmiri resistance leaders and we look forward to seeing them”, the spokesman to Pakistan High Commission in India, Manzoor Ali Memon, told Anadolu Agency.
