INDOPAK TALK FREEZE SET TO HIT A DECADE
India and Pakistan are inching towards another milestone in their fraught relationship – 10 years without any structured or sustained dialogue aimed at addressing outstanding issues. Within days of the Mumbai attacks carried out by operatives of Pakistan-based
LeT during November 26-29, 2008, India called off talks.
NEWDELHI: India and Pakistan are inching towards another milestone in their fraught relationship – 10 years without any structured or sustained dialogue aimed at addressing outstanding issues such as terrorism, Kashmir and humanitarian issues.
Within days of the Mumbai attacks carried out by operatives of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba during November 26-29, 2008, India called off the more than a decade-old composite dialogue, with Indian diplomats saying it could no longer be business as usual.
To be sure, there have been several interactions in this period, but no composite dialogue. Terrorism emanating from Pakistani soil remains the central hurdle to New Delhi resuming talks with Islamabad. External affairs ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said on October 18 there is currently “no proposal for a Track 1 or 1.5 dialogue or meetings between India and Pakistan.”
“We have time and again very clearly mentioned talks and terror can’t go together, that it was one of the reasons why the scheduled meeting in New York between the two foreign ministers (in September) was cancelled,” he told a news briefing.
The spokesperson made it clear the “onus is on Pakistan to take credible steps to create conducive conditions” for talks, “which of course, means taking action against terrorist infrastructure which operates from its soil.”
Pakistan remains hopeful of some sort of breakthrough despite the cancellation of the meeting of the foreign ministers on the margins of the UN General Assembly, with information minister Fawad Chaudhry saying talks remain the only option.
In the decade since the Mumbai attacks, India and Pakistan have held several one-off meetings to discuss matters such as trade and their officials have met at multilateral forums.