Rao also lent support to Pillai’s statement ahead of the Islamabad talks that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence had a significant role in the Mumbai terror attack, saying that India is definitely concerned about the ISI’s role in 26/11.
“We are definitely concerned about the role of state actors in terrorism,” Rao told a news channel in an interview.
Pillai had stated in the interview that Lashkar-e-Taiba agent David Headley’s questioning by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) had confirmed that the “ISI had a much more significant role to play in the Mumbai attacks...”
“The ISI was literally controlling and coordinating the attacks from the beginning till the end,” Pillai had stated.
The Indian foreign secretary reiterated that the talks between the two nations had not collapsed.
“There are differences in perception, but the gap is not unbridgeable,” she said. Rao said that the tone and tenor of Qureshi’s remarks could have been better. “In diplomacy, as in life, such ups and downs are common,” she said.
In another TV interview on Friday night, Rao had stressed that the India-Pakistan talks had not “collapsed” and the dialogue process between them “must go on”.
She had told a news channel that Qureshi’s critical remarks about Krishna had come as “a real surprise” for India. “The comments (by Qureshi) came as a surprise, there was no real reason for the comments,” the foreign secretary said.
Qureshi at a press conference in Islamabad took potshots at Krishna and launched a broadside against India’s “selective focus on terror”. He even said the “Indian foreign minister received foreign policy directions from New Delhi repeatedly during our meeting”.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 18th, 2010.
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