Pakistan’s new FM calls for dialogue with India

Pakistan wants an “uninterrupted, continued dialogue” with arch-rival India, its new foreign minister said Monday, stressing the importance of talks between the nuclear-armed countries who have fought three wars.

“We are not only two neighbors but we are two atomic powers,” Shah Mehmood Qureshi, who became Pakistan's foreign minister for the second time after being sworn in Monday, told a news conference.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan also called for a better relationship with India in his first televised address late Sunday, as did the previous government of Nawaz Sharif.

But Sharif's overtures to India are widely believed to have incurred opposition from Pakistan's powerful military, and he was ousted by the Supreme Court last year for alleged corruption.

“We have long-lasting problems... We don't have, in my opinion, any solution other than talks,” Qureshi said of the relationship with India, especially in a situation “where reaction time is very limited.”

“We need an uninterrupted, continued dialogue,” he said, referencing Kashmir in particular.

Relations between India and Pakistan have been tense ever since independence from Britain in 1947 – particularly over Kashmir, the divided Himalayan territory over which they have fought two of their three wars.

Qureshi said Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had sent a letter congratulating Khan, and “sent a message to start talks.”

There was no official statement on the letter from the Indian foreign ministry, but the Press Trust of India also reported its existence and content.