New Delhi: India has called off the meeting announced yesterday, September 20, between Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj and her Pakistani counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi in New York. “The true face of the new Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan has been revealed,” said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar citing the recent killing of Indian security personnel and the release of postage stamps by Pakistan glorifying Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist Burhan Wani.
“Any conversation with Pakistan in such an environment would be meaningless … Consequently, there would be no meeting between the Foreign Ministers any longer,” Kumar said.
Reacting to the development, Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi Friday said India has “priorities other than dialogue” and alleged that there is a group in New Delhi that does not want talks to happen, according to a PTI report quoting local media.
New Delhi had agreed to Pakistan’s proposal for a meeting between the Foreign Ministers of the two countries in New York later in response to “the spirit reflected in the letters from the new Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Pakistan”, foreign ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said.
But it is obvious, Kumar said, that behind Pakistan’s proposal for talks to make a fresh beginning, there was an evil agenda. It is good that the Pakistan PM’s “real face” has been revealed in the first few months in office.
For the two neighbors who have struggled to shake off their accumulated trust deficit, the foreign ministers’ meeting was the first high-level contact between the two sides since India snapped all formal talks with Pakistan following the terror attack on Pathankot airbase in 2016.
New Delhi has since then insisted that talks and terror could not go together.
When it announced the meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, the government had made it clear that it did not amount to resumption of bilateral dialogue or any change on its stated position on cross-border terrorism.
“This is just a meeting, too much should not be read into the proposed meeting,” Kumar said. “This is not a resumption of dialogue. They asked for a meeting, we said ‘yes’.”
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