Talks not linked to Pathankot probe, says Indian envoy

Foreign secretaries, NSAs in contact with each other

ISLAMABAD:

A top Indian diplomat has said that revival of stalled talks with Pakistan is not linked with progress in Islamabad’s investigation into last month’s deadly terrorist attack on the Indian Air Force (IAF) base in Pathankot.

“I would not say that,” said India’s newly-appointed envoy to Pakistan, Gautam Bambawale, when he was asked whether a meeting between the foreign secretaries of the two countries was tied to the outcome of investigations into the Pathankot assault.



Seven Indian security officials were killed when gunmen mounted the brazen assault on the IAF base in Indian Punjab on January 2, 2015. New Delhi blamed the attack on Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) militant group, and postponed the foreign-secretary-level talks.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif subsequently formed a Special Investigation Team to probe the Jaish link. The STI was supposed to visit India, though it said there was no evidence of involvement of the JeM top cadres in the attack.

Speaking to journalists in Islamabad on Monday, Bambawale said both the foreign secretaries and national security advisers (NSAs) of the two countries were in contact with each other though a new date for talks has yet to be finalised. “A meeting will only come through once the atmosphere is ripe,” he added.

The foreign secretaries were to meet in mid-January after talks were announced following Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s surprise stopover in Lahore in December 2015. The officials were to discuss measures for carrying forward the Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue, which had been announced earlier that month.

But the Pathankot attack had cast doubts on the talks. The meeting was eventually postponed at the eleventh hour.

Bambawale, however, insisted talks were not conditional to Islamabad’s probe into the Pathankot attack. The inordinate delay in rescheduling the talks, though, suggests New Delhi might not be ready to proceed with the process yet.

When talks were postponed in January, the two sides announced that a meeting between the two top diplomats would be rescheduled in the ‘very near future.’ This tone was tuned to ‘very soon’ in subsequent official statements with reports emerging that talks could be destined for as early as February with Pakistan pushing for a robust dialogue mechanism which would be immune to such disturbances.

But a month after talks were first postponed, sources say talks now seem unlikely. This is not the first time bilateral talks between the two countries have fallen prey to terror incidents.



One of the key casualties of the stalled dialogue has been trade. The Indian high commissioner agreed there was a need for enhanced trade ties between the two neighbours.

He also stressed the need for visa relaxation for the businessmen of the two countries as well as organisation of trade fares on both sides of the border.


Published in The Express Tribune, February 16^th, 2016.