Talks shouldn't be hit by impediments: Pak

Pakistan on Saturday stressed that bilateral engagements with India should not be hindered by “impediments” strewn on the “road to peace”.

“The road to peace is always strewn with many impediments and requires courage to take difficult decisions. Peace is in mutual interest of Pakistan and India and it can only be achieved through uninterrupted dialogue,” Pakistan’s High Commissioner to India, Abdul Basit, said in Jaipur.

The remarks by Islamabad’s envoy to New Delhi appeared to be in response to Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar’s recent comment that making Islamabad act against anti-India terror networks operating from Pakistan would always take priority over New Delhi’s diplomatic engagement with the neighbouring country.

Basit’s remark also came on a day after Lt Gen K J Singh, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief (GOC-in-C) of the Western Command of Indian Army, said that the agencies had received inputs about a possible terror attack in India, particularly to create “maximum media impact” at a time when the Maha Shivratri festival would be observed on Monday while the Budget Session of Parliament is on.

Media impact

“These events (terror attacks) are planned to create maximum media impact and when can you create a media impact when Parliament is in session, when a festival is taking place, so both happen to be going on,” Lt Gen K J Singh was quoted by PTI in a report from Pathankot.

Even after the January 1-4 terror attack on the Indian Air Force base at Pathankot in Punjab, New Delhi did not call off the proposed resumption of the stalled bilateral dialogue with Islamabad, taking into account Pakistan’s offer to act on the information provided by India on the role by Jaish-e-Mohammed operatives in planning, coordinating and carrying out the cross-border strike.
In the wake of the terror strike, Jaishankar, however, deferred his proposed January 15 meeting with Pakistani Foreign Secretary, A A Chaudhry, in Islamabad.

New Delhi and Islamabad, however, are exploring possibilities of a meeting between Jaishankar and Chaudhry on the sideline of a SAARC meet in Kathmandu in the middle of this month.