Domestic compulsions: Indian FM downgrades contacts with Pakistan

Says ‘routine things’ between the two countries are continuing.

NEW DELHI:

In the latest sign that domestic political pressures were shaping foreign policy objectives, India’s Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid on Saturday downgraded last month’s talks between the leaders of India and Pakistan, saying their meeting in New York should not be construed as a resumption of dialogue.

Khurshid’s comments on board the Indian prime minister’s aircraft suggested that skirmishes along the Line of Control were clouding foreign as well as the country’s domestic policies.

Despite a confidence-building meeting between the prime ministers of the two countries on the fringes of the UN General Assembly in New York, the Indian external affairs minister backpedaled stating that the time had not come to resume dialogue.

“I must make it very clear that we have not reached a stage where we have done something like the ‘so-called resumed talks,” he said.

“We used to have a composite dialogue which then got suspended, and then we began to move towards a process to resume that dialogue subsequently,” he added.

Khurshid’s statements indicate that while India is talking to Pakistan, it is still refraining from calling the exercise a dialogue.

“Although the two prime ministers have met, we have not yet indicated any dates, timelines or perspective on the resumed dialogue,” Khurshid said downplaying the mood, adding “it is still not clear whether and when a political level dialogue will take place.”

He said incidents on the LoC are ‘unwelcome and distracted attention from the efforts made by both sides to move towards normalising relations between the two countries.

On the bright side, Khurshid said that there were “many routine things” still continuing between India and Pakistan despite the adverse political atmosphere and that these “will continue”.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 13^th, 2013.