India-Pakistan NSA talks on August 23

With Pakistan agreeing on the date India proposed for the meeting of National Security Advisors of the Prime Ministers, the talks would take place in New Delhi on August 23.

Nawaz Sharif’s Foreign Affairs and National Security Advisor Sartaj Aziz confirmed he would visit New Delhi on August 23 for the talks.

Aziz will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval. They are expected to discuss all issues related to terrorism, as Modi and Sharif agreed when they met at Ufa in Russia on July 10 last.

“Yes, I can confirm it that I will be going to India on 23rd (August) for talks,” Aziz told journalists in Islamabad, Press Trust of India reported on Thursday.

The confirmation comes at a time when Islamabad’s dilly-dallying on New Delhi’s proposal sparked speculations that the state and non-state actors are putting pressure on Pakistan government to derail the process of engagement the two Prime Ministers agreed in Ufa.

Doval is expected to hand Aziz the dossier on the preliminary probe on July 27 Gurdaspur terror attack.

CCTV footage and GPS devices showed that the terrorists crossed over from Pakistan to carry out the attack. Before Punjab’s police commandos gun down the terrorists, they killed a senior cop and six others.

Doval will also present an interrogation of Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist Naved alias Usman alias Qasim, arrested in Jammu & Kashmir on August 5, who confessed that the outfit recruited him from Faisalabad.

Sources in New Delhi said the NSA would cite several infiltration bids by terrorists from across the Line of Control, besides a number of ceasefire violations by Pakistani troops.

New Delhi will also press Islamabad to bring 26/11 plotters to justice, in the wake of revelations by former chief of Federal Investigation Agency of Pakistan in an article that the 2008 attacks were planned and executed from across the border. 

“It (upcoming meeting) is not a breakthrough in terms of composite dialogue on all issues. But at least it is ice- breaking on some issues. And let us hope that it would lead to further more comprehensive dialogue on all the issues between the two countries. So we do believe in dialogue to resolve the issues,” Aziz said in Islamabad on Thursday.