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NEW DELHI: Pakistan has spurned basic protocol during Foreign Secretary talks with India by releasing a statement while the dialogue was still in process. As a further irritant, Pakistan’s statement makes it clear that Jammu and Kashmir is “a core issue that requires a just solution.”
Today’s meeting between Indian foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry is the first senior-level conversation between the countries after January’s deadly terror attack at the Pathankot air force base by a group of terrorists from across the border.
In a move that earned sharp criticism from the opposition, Prime Minister Narendra Modi sanctioned a visit to the base by a team of investigators from Islamabad so they could inspect evidence offered by Delhi as proof that the terror strike was planned and executed by Pakistanis.The attack -which killed seven military personnel – forced the cancellation of talks between Foreign Secretaries that had been scheduled for January.
Today’s session comes on the sidelines of a regional summit in Delhi about Afghanistan.
India has made it clear that it expects firm action from Pakistan in punishing top leaders of the terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed whose chief Masood Azhar masterminded the Pathankot attack. Last month, Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj met her counterpart Sartaj Aziz at a summit in Nepal and emphasized that any dialogue between the two countries will have to include a detailed response from Islamabad on how it plans to act against those responsible for the Pathankot attack.
