On Saturday night, Islamabad announced its decision, with the Pakistani Foreign Office (FO) saying in a statement that NSA Sartaj Aziz would not arrive in New Delhi on Sunday to hold talks with his Indian counterpart Ajit K Doval.
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While India was adamant that under the Ufa accord, the NSA meeting was restricted to terrorism-related issues, Pakistan insisted the Kashmir issue was very much part of the agenda.
“Days after the NSA talks between India and Pakistan were called off, Pakistan’s National Security Advisor Sartaj Aziz has accused “(Indian Prime Minister Narendra) Modi’s India” of acting like a regional superpower.
India’s Home Minister Rajnath Singh, however, pointed out that it was Pakistan and not India that had canceled the talks.
They said, while she spoke of the need of dialogue to resolve bilateral issues, in the next breath she put forth preconditions for the talks between two National Security Advisers.
Since the meeting between the two premiers in July, militant attacks and border skirmishes have poisoned the atmosphere between Islamabad and New Delhi.
Pakistan said late Saturday it could not accept India’s “preconditions” for the talks, which had been scheduled for Sunday in New Delhi, effectively cancelling them.
Pakistani and Indian prime ministers had agreed on the meeting of the NSAs when they met at Ufa, Russia, on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit.
Security talks between India and Pakistan failed to take off as bitter disagreements emerged between the nuclear arch-rivals over the agenda.
Mr Aziz said that “the global community believes that Kashmir is a problem between the two countries which should be resolved”. India had stressed that it wanted terrorism to be the only item on the agenda, but Pakistan wanted to discuss the dispute over the Kashmir region, which is claimed by both sides.
“We are confident that the meeting between the border forces on September 5 and 6 will go ahead“, Aziz told Karan Thapar on India Today.
Anwar added, “People were looking forward to it as high level talks were about to take place”.
India objected to Pakistan’s intentions of meeting separatists from Kashmir.
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Pakistan said this is the only way to improve the prospects for peace between the two countries.
