India has conveyed to Pakistan that any bilateral engagement must result in its withdrawal from the territories of Jammu and Kashmir it had been illegally occupying.
India also accused Pakistan of being the ‘prime perpetrator’ of terrorism targeting not only India, but also other nations in the region.
“Foreign Secretary (S Jaishankar) has conveyed that the Government of India seeks a result-oriented dialogue on the subject. As Pakistan is aware, the intended result is the early vacation by Pakistan of its illegal occupation (over parts of Jammu and Kashmir),” Vikas Swarup, spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs, told journalists on Friday.
Swarup was responding to a question about the content of Jaishankar’s letter to Pakistan Foreign Secretary A A Chaudhry.
The letter was in response to a communiqué from Chaudhry, who on August 19 had invited his counterpart in New Delhi to travel to Islamabad “by the end of this month to discuss the Jammu and Kashmir dispute with a view to finding a fair and just solution, as per the United Nations Security Council resolutions and aspirations of the people of Jammu and Kashmir”.
Jaishankar wrote back, saying that any further discussion between India and Pakistan must be based on the Simla Agreement of 1972, the Lahore Declaration of 1999 and the Joint Statement of 2004.
“The foreign secretary further made it explicit that the agenda before India and Pakistan today is clearly to put an end to cross-border terrorism and incitement to violence from Pakistan,” said Swarup.
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