Pakistan-India dialogue: Khar says this time the talks will go on

India’s Foreign Office rejects claims that it was soft on Mumbai attacks .

LAHORE: Returning home after her most important assignment as foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar on Thursday said the dialogue process with India will no longer be interrupted.

Addressing a press conference on her arrival at the Lahore airport, the minister said both countries had agreed that the dialogue must be a continuous process, adding that talks lose credibility when disrupted.

Khar said a new level of engagement had been established between Islamabad and New Delhi. “I met Indian Foreign Minister SM Krishna and the talks were positive and constructive,” she said.

Khar said that she met political leaders across the country, including the leader of opposition, adding that India wants to resolve all issues including the Kashmir dispute.

The foreign minister said her meeting with politicians in Indian Kashmir had been highly criticised in India, while earlier in the day, Kashmiri Hurriyet leader Syed Ali Gilani was placed under house arrest again after his return from New Delhi where he had met Khar.

Meanwhile, facing criticism that India had given more than it had got in talks with Pakistan, India’s Foreign Office said on Thursday that there had been no dilution of the stand on terrorism.

The Indian government, in an unusual intervention said: “We categorically reject inferences that there was any expression of satisfaction on “the progress on Mumbai trial”. WITH ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY ADITI PHADNIS in New Delhi

Published in The Express Tribune, July 29^th,  2011.