It’s India that threw a spanner in the works: Pakistan

Postponement of Saarc Summit

 Foreign Office says Islamabad remains committed to holding 19th summit at the earliest; India lived up to its track record of playing a devious role in postponement of summits

ISLAMABAD: Surprised that India was blaming it for blocking and playing a damaging role in Saarc, Pakistan instead reminded India on Monday that contrary to its thinking, fortunately people were not suffering from short memory loss and in fact it was India that violated the spirit of the Saarc Chapter.

In fact, Pakistan says it remains committed to holding the 19th Saarc Summit at the earliest. Foreign Office spokesman Nafees Zakaria was responding to remarks by the Indian Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar who on Monday turned his guns on Pakistan for what he said was Islamabad’s “hugely damaging” role while “blocking” regional initiatives under the Saarc.

With less than two months before he retires from office, Jaishankar threatened that if Islamabad continues to stall the Saarc connectivity then these states would look towards Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation. (BIMSTECH). He was giving a talk on “India and the Great Powers: Continuity and Change” in New Delhi.

“Problem with Saarc is that some basic sort of standards of regional cooperation have to apply. If you say I will be regional member but I will not allow regional trade, I will not allow regional connectivity, will not allow regional motorways, I will not allow regional railways, than what is it about? You cannot be a member of a region and block every possible regional initiative and still say I am good member. That sort of approach has to change,” Jaishankar said.

Asked to comment by The News, the spokesman responded, “When Pakistan had made all the preparations for the 19th Saarc Summit based on all the members’ confirmation, it was India that threw the spanner in the works. 

“Indian intentions were evident from the time they started participating at the ministerial meetings that were to precede the Summit.” He added that the spirit of the Saarc Charter was violated when a member state casts shadow of its bilateral problems on the multilateral forum for regional cooperation.

“India lived up to its track record of playing a devious role in the postponement of Saarc summits at least four times out of eight occasions in the past. Pakistan has never caused such a setback to the Saarc process”, added the spokesman.

The Indian  foreign secretary on the one hand wants connectivity projects for Saarc states yet his government uses every trick in the book to “disconnect”  states from gathering around a table to thrash out common issues, like the postponed Saarc Summit in Islamabad this month.

Jaishankar spoke about BIMSTECH at a time when Assistant Foreign Minister of the Peoples Republic of China Kong Xuanyou met Pakistan’s Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs and the Foreign Secretary where both sides expressed satisfaction over continued growth of cooperative strategic partnership.

If New Delhi wants to run Saarc on its own terms, then for Pakistan there are options like the CPEC which also paves the road to “regional connectivity”. “It was noted that timely completion of CPEC’s early harvest projects would significantly contribute towards the overall vision of the leadership of the two countries for the uplift of the region and improve regional connectivity”, the spokesman said in a statement.

He also reminded the departing foreign secretary that Saarc was all about socio-economic development in the region, which had the highest concentration of world’s population in abject poverty.

“The decision by India to derail the Summit contradicts Prime Minister Modi’s own call to fight against poverty in the region”, said the spokesman.

The Indian foreign secretary appeared to be also having problems with the CPEC as he found fault with Pakistan and China developing areas which fall in a “disputed area”, like  Azad Kashmir. He also pointed to India’s “allergy” of any third power to intervene in problems between India and Pakistan.

Despite the fact Indian Occupied Kashmir continues to burn with Kashmiris being killed on a daily basis, the foreign secretary insisted that there was no need for major powers to get involved between India and Pakistan, saying it gives rise to "expectations and illusions" that are not sustained by objective facts on the ground. This despite the fact that Kashmir does not see a future without conflict.

Violations at the Line of Control which also continue unabated, as Monday saw the death toll in Pakistan to 27 with nearly a hundred injured.  Expressing his country’s ‘allergy’ to such intervention including the United Nations, he insisted that "a constantly interfering umpire" does not allow the game to take its natural course.

"If you have to play and if you have an umpire who is constantly interfering, the game does not take its natural course. And when a game does not take its natural course, I think you end up with problems which then fester and increasingly become hard to resolve”, he insisted.

Pakistan also says that India’s decision to scuttle the summit on the basis of unfounded assumptions on the Uri incident was a futile effort to divert attention of the world from the atrocities perpetrated by India in IHK.

“Pakistan attaches great importance to regional cooperation under the umbrella of Saarc and remains committed to hosting the 19th Saarc summit at Islamabad at the earliest so that the objectives of regional cooperation under the Saarc umbrella can be pursued more vigorously”, assured the spokesman.