Foreign minister Jaishankar says can’t talk to ‘Terroristan’

NEWYORK: External affairs minister S Jaishankar has said India is willing to talk to Pakistan but not to “terroristan”, a reference to Islamabad’s role in sponsoring and supporting terrorism against New Delhi.

Pakistan has created an “entire industry of terrorism” to fuel unrest in Kashmir and India cannot talk to a country that sponsors terror, Jaishankar said while addressing an audience at the Asia Society on Tuesday.

“They (Pakistan) have to accept the model which they have built for themselves, no longer works. You cannot, in this day and age, conduct policy using terrorism as a legitimate instrument of statecraft…We have no problem in talking to Pakistan, but we have a problem talking to terroristan,” he said during an interview with Asia Society’s president Kevin Rudd on Tuesday.

Jaishankar said India’s decision to revoke Jammu and Kashmir’s special status and split the state into two union territories drew a reaction from only Pakistan and China. Pakistan downgraded diplomatic ties with India and China voiced “serious concern” over the situation in Kashmir. He emphasised that revoking Article 370 of the constitution had no implications for India’s external borders.

“We are sort of reformatting this within our existing boundaries…I think, for Pakistan, it was a country which has really created an entire industry of terrorism to deal with the Kashmir issue. In my view, it’s actually bigger than Kashmir, I think they have created it for India,” he said.

Pakistan sees its “investment” of 70 years undercut by India’s new policy, he added.