Indo-Pak Talks ‘Encouraging Step’; Depends on Response to Terror: Krishna
External Affairs Minister SM Krishna has said that Indo-Pak foreign secretary level talks is an ‘encouraging step’ towards restoring dialogue and better communication, but this engagement will depend upon Pakistan’s response to India’s core concern on terrorism, reported PTI.
In a suo motu statement in both Houses of Parliament, Krishna said that India told Pakistan that ‘trust and confidence’ must be restored if ‘we are to build upon the past discussions held between the two countries at an appropriate time’, said report.
The minister stressed that India could ‘not wish away the fact that Pakistan is our neighbor’ and that the government was convinced that door for dialogue with it ‘must not’ be shut, said report.
“The talks between India and Pakistan .. represent an encouraging step towards restoring dialogue and better communication between the two countries,” Krishna was quoted as saying.
He underlined that ‘communication and engagement represent the best way forward’ and that by talking, India was not diluting its position or resolve to defeat terrorism, report said.
Besides, Krishna pointed out that ‘India’s engagement with Pakistan will be predicated, as it has been since the Mumbai attack, on the response of Pakistan to our core concerns on terrorism’, said report.
About Pakistan’s repeated insistence to resume Composite Dialogue, the minister was quoted as saying: “We responded that the resumption of such a process would have to await the restoration of greater trust and confidence.”
He noted that ‘sincere and genuine efforts’ made in the past years by India for building trust and confidence had been repeatedly thwarted by acts of terrorism’, report said.
