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For meaningful talks, respect India’s views: Khurshid to Pak
Says LoC peace a precondition for taking ties forward
Ashok Tuteja/TNS

Gurgaon, November 12
Amid continued tension, External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid today met Pakistan Prime Minister’s Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz and firmly told him that Islamabad must respect India’s sentiments, points of view and sensitivities if it was serious about a meaningful dialogue between the two countries.

Recent events, particularly Aziz’s meeting with Kashmiri separatists in New Delhi on Sunday, would obviously be counter-productive for normalisation of ties, he told the Pakistani leader at the meeting here on the margins of the ASEM (Asia-Europe Meeting) ministerial conclave.

“This is not a dialogue that happens in isolation...this is a dialogue that is contextual and needs public support and, we think, we have done a great deal to help the Pakistan Government get the public support that it needs to be able to have a fair and transparent dialogue. Conducive conditions have to be created by both sides and not by one side alone,” Khurshid said during the half-an-hour meeting. Aziz later also met National Security Adviser Shiv Shanker Menon. However, he has not been given an audience by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Khurshid made it unambiguously clear to Aziz that peace and tranquility along the LoC was a precondition for movement forward in India-Pakistan relations.

MEA spokesman Syed Akbaruddin said both agreed that the DGMOs of the two countries must meet at an early date to take forward the process of ensuring peace along the LoC. The spokesman pointed out that the two DGMOs were in touch to work out the modalities for an early face-to-face meeting. “Our understanding is that the 2003 ceasefire should hold. Peace and tranquility on the LoC is one of the most important CBMs both for India and Pakistan and if that holds and the DGMOs concur with that we will proceed further on that,'' the spokesman said.

Asked why the two DGMOs had not met so far when they were directed to do so following a meeting between the Indian Prime Minister and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif in New York in September, the spokesman said: “What happens on the border could only be answered by them...they are the sentinels of the border.”

Khurshid also regretted that Pakistan had so far done little to bring to justice the perpetrators of the Mumbai terror attack.

On Aziz meeting separatists

• Recent events, particularly Aziz’s meeting with Kashmiri separatists in New Delhi on Sunday, would obviously be counter-productive for normalisation of ties, Khurshid told the Pakistani leader at the meeting
• Khurshid said: “This is not a dialogue that happens in isolation...this is a dialogue that is contextual and needs public support, and we think, we have done a great deal to help the Pakistan Government get the public support that it needs to be able to have a fair and transparent dialogue