FO says whenever India is ready, Pakistan will be ready to engage it through dialogue; Kashmir is main issue between two countries and longstanding issue on agenda of UNSC; surprised over trilateral talks on Afghanistan minus Pakistan
ISLAMABAD: The Foreign Office on Thursday said talks with New Delhi would only be held on the Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK) and Pakistan will not accept any pre-conditions in this regard.
“I have said earlier also that whenever India is ready, Pakistan will be ready to engage it through dialogue and definitely we will like to talk about Kashmir because it is the main issue between the two countries and it is also the longstanding issue on the agenda of the United Nations Security Council,” said the Foreign Office Spokesman Nafees Zakaria during the weekly media briefing here.
Pakistan was taken completely by surprise when the United States announced that September would see fresh trilateral talks between the leadership of the US, Afghanistan and India on the sidelines of the UNGA in New York.Pakistan, the immediate neighbour of Afghanistan with stakes in the peace process, was completely ignored by Washington.
Even though US Secretary of State Senator John Kerry was traveling in the region, he chose to skip Islamabad and it appears that Pakistan was certainly not taken into confidence before an agreement was reached to hold these fresh trilateral talks.
“My hope is that Pakistan as a country is not isolated by this but is encouraged by this,” Senator John Kerry announced this week during a visit to New Delhi while it was in 2013 that such trilateral talks had been held. He did not elaborate the wisdom of keeping Pakistan out of these talks.
When this was put to the Foreign Office spokesman, he appeared surprised. “We have seen the announcement by Secretary Kerry in his press briefing about the proposal to set up trilateral talks between the US, India and Afghanistan. We are not sure as to what is the need for it, what this proposed arrangement hopes to achieve, what would be its parameters and modalities?”
He pointed out that nevertheless Pakistan would remain committed to the efforts towards achieving peace through Afghan-owned and Afghan-led processes such as QCG, Heart of Asia.Unknown to Pakistan, the harsh reality as spelt out by Washington, Kabul and New Delhi is that there appears to be no appetite or any interest by Kabul and Washington to revive any of these processes.
“I reiterate that peace in Afghanistan is in the interest of Pakistan and the region. Pakistan remains committed to the efforts towards achieving peace,” the spokesman added.To a query, the spokesman confessed that he had no information as to when the next meeting of the Heart of Asia would take place.
“I think the Heart of Asia process is meant to assist Afghanistan achieve economic and security stability. All the 14 members of the Heart of Asia are engaged in seeing peace and security in Afghanistan. That country has been in a state of war for the last 37 years. We have seen that the world’s most strong economies and military powers were there for the last 15 years. They tried to achieve some sort of solution to the problems of that country but you know what the outcome is,” he pointed out.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said Pakistan had made progress in the fight against extremism in recent months but urged Islamabad to push harder against militants hiding within its borders as tensions with India rise amid more violence in disputed Kashmir.
“It is clear that Pakistan has work to do in order to push harder against its indigenous groups that are engaged in extremist activities,” Kerry said on Wednesday, the second day of a visit to India.
However, the spokesman also pointed to the media some other remarks that Kerry had made in which Pakistan’s policy against terrorism was lauded. “In fairness, the Pakistanis have suffered greatly from terrorism in their own country,” Kerry had said.
“I believe that in the last month’s progress is being made and Pakistanis are moving at a greater pace. All of us need to be supportive and also understanding of how difficult it is to take it on step by step.”
The new defence deal between Washington and New Delhi appeared not to worry Islamabad.“It is an agreement between two sovereign countries. We hope it contributes to peace and stability in the region. Pakistan would like to see that such arrangements do not contribute to polarising the region by disturbing the strategic balance in South Asia and escalating the arms buildup,” he explained.
While there are no signs that the prime ministers of Pakistan and India would have a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the UNGA, Islamabad is not ruling this option altogether.“We have said earlier also that we will not accept any preconditions for talks. I have said earlier also that whenever India is ready, Pakistan will be ready to engage India through dialogue and definitely we will like to talk about Kashmir because it is the main issue between the two countries and it is also the longstanding issue on the agenda of the United Nations Security Council,” he said.
He added that Pakistan had condemned the Pathankot incident, sent its team to India for investigation and whatever intelligence and information that have been gathered by this team was being assessed from the legal angle.
“So once this assessment is completed, we will be able to say something about it,” the spokesman said at a time when the Indian Minister for External Affairs Sushma Swaraj told Senator Kerry that “talks with Pakistan will happen only when it takes steps on the Pathankot terror attack” since “terror and talks cannot go hand-in-hand.”