India dismisses Pak ‘truce call’ report

ISLAMABAD/NEW DELHI: Pakistan Army chief Gen Qamar Bajwa tried to reach out to his Indian counterpart, Gen Bipin Rawat, to initiate talks but was rebuffed, The New York Times reported on Tuesday, though a person in New Delhi familiar with the matter denied any such outreach.

The outreach was initiated by Bajwa, seen as “more moderate” on India than his predecessors, months before Pakistan’s general election on July 25 as the powerful military was concerned about the country’s international isolation and faltering economy, the Times reported.

Citing unnamed Western diplomats and a senior Pakistani official, the report described India’s response to the overture as “tepid”. Pakistan had offered to resume talks with India on the Kashmir issue, stalled since 2015.

Indian Army officials did not comment when they were asked to respond to the report.

However, a person familiar with the matter said, “The army is not aware of any such outreach by the Pakistan Army. It has certainly not happened at the level of the headquarters.”

Bajwa and Rawat served almost simultaneously in a UN peacekeeping mission in Congo almost a decade ago and get along well, the Times cited diplomats as saying. Bajwa, who has said conflict between the two sides can only be resolved through dialogue, “tried to reach out to General Rawat to initiate talks” but the effort was stymied by what one diplomat called a “system mismatch”.

Pakistan’s military controls foreign and security policies, which is not the case in India. The Indian Army could not “agree to a peace deal without the civilian government’s approval”, the report said.

The report said a key objective for Pakistan in reaching out to India is to “open barriers” to bilateral trade, which would give Islamabad more access to regional markets. Pakistan’s military sees the battered economy as a security threat, because it aggravates insurgencies.

“We want to move forward and we are trying our best to have good ties with all our neighbors, including India,” Pakistan’s information minister Fawad Chaudhry told the Times.

“As General Bajwa says, regions prosper, countries don’t. India cannot prosper by weakening Pakistan.”

Diplomats in Islamabad said Pakistan’s outreach might also be driven its Chinese allies. China, which is investing $62 billion in an economic corridor, has prodded Pakistan to stabilise its border with India.