India not to call off NSA meet

Notwithstanding the recent terror attack at a border town in Punjab and the arrest of a Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist from Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir on Wednesday, New Delhi has not yet called off the proposed meeting between National Security Advisors of the Prime Ministers of the two countries.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval is likely to host his Pakistani counterpart Sartaj Aziz in New Delhi this month. New Delhi has proposed August 23 and 24 as dates for meeting between Doval and Aziz, Foreign Affairs and National Security Advisor of Pakistan Prime Minister M Nawaz Sharif. Islamabad, however, has not yet responded to the proposal from New Delhi.

India, however, made it clear to Pakistan that “a meaningful dialogue would necessarily require an environment free from violence and terror”.

Senior officials in New Delhi said that the government had taken note of recent instances of attempts by the “state and non-state actors” of Pakistan to export terrorism to India.

New Delhi, according to the sources, however, is still keen to stick to the roadmap of engagement Modi and Sharif agreed upon when they had met on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s summit at Ufa in Russia on July 10.

Several top officials in the government are of the view that the meeting between the NSAs of the two prime ministers would rather give Doval an opportunity to present before Aziz all the recent instances of terror attacks launched from Pakistan targeting India. 

Doval is likely to hand over to Aziz a dossier on findings of the preliminary probes into the terror strike in Gurdaspur in Punjab on July 27. The CCTV footages and GPS devices as well as other equipment used by the terrorists helped investigators conclude that the terrorists had crossed over from Pakistan to India to carry out the attack. Before the terrorists were gunned down by the Punjab Police commandos, they killed a senior cop and six others. The NSA is also likely to present before his counterpart a report on the interrogation of Naved alias Usman alias Kasim, the LeT terrorist, who was arrested in Jammu and Kashmir on Wednesday and confessed that he was from Faisalabad in Pakistan. He will also cite several recent infiltration bids by terrorists from Pakistan.