India arrogant for cancelling rare meeting: Imran Khan
New Delhi said it cancelled the talks after the ‘latest brutal killings’
India’s decision to cancel rare talks with Islamabad was disappointing and ‘arrogant’, Imran Khan said on Saturday, one day after New Delhi accused Pakistan’s Prime Minister of harbouring an ‘evil agenda’.
India pulled the plug on a meeting between its Foreign Minister and her Pakistani counterpart set for next week on the sidelines of a major UN conference, just one day after saying it would go ahead.
The Foreign Ministry in New Delhi blamed the about-face on recent actions that had revealed Pakistan’s ‘evil agenda’ and the ‘true face’ of Khan, who hit back on Twitter on Saturday. killed by Indian troops in July 2016, whose death sparked a wave of violent protests in the territory.
India has long accused Pakistan of arming rebel groups in Kashmir, a Himalayan territory divided between the two countries but claimed in full by both.
In a statement from its foreign office, Pakistan said on Friday it had ‘nothing to do with’ the deaths, accusing India of spreading ‘motivated and malicious propaganda’.
The meeting in New York between Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj and Pakistan’s Shah Mehmood Qureshi - on the sidelines of the annual UN General Assembly debate - was only confirmed on Thursday.
It came after Khan wrote to his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi calling for a resumption of talks between the nucleararmed countries.
High-level talks between India and Pakistan are rare. Indian media described the meeting would have been the first in nearly three years.
Friday’s statement from New Delhi said the original decision to hold the meeting ‘was in response to the spirit reflected in the letters from the new Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Pakistan’. Khan’s letter ‘had spoken of... bringing a positive change and mutual desire for peace as also readiness to discuss terrorism’, it added.