Pakistan snubs Indian invite for Afghan moot

Pakistan turned down the Indian invitation on Tuesday to participate in a regional conference on Afghanistan next week in New Delhi, saying that “a spoiler cannot be a peacemaker”.

India invited the national security advisers of regional countries, including Pakistan, China, Russia and some Central Asian States for the conference on Afghanistan. The Foreign Office had confirmed the Indian invitation but said a decision would be taken at an appropriate time, keeping in view the current state of the relationship between the two countries.

“I am not going [to India]. A spoiler cannot be a peacemaker,” National Security Adviser Dr Moeed Yusuf told a news conference on Tuesday when asked whether he would be attending the regional conference in New Delhi.

Pakistan has long viewed India’s role in Afghanistan with suspicion. It has accused New Delhi of using Afghan soil to undermine Pakistan. Dr Yusuf’s confirmation that Pakistan would not be attending the conference suggested a consistent Pakistani stance that India had no direct role in the peace efforts in Afghanistan.

Also, it was difficult for Pakistan to accept the Indian invitation at a time, when tensions between the two countries were running high.

Official sources said that initially, Pakistan thought to consider the Indian invitation but after consultations among all the relevant quarters, it was decided that there was no point in sending the NSA to New Delhi at this juncture.

The visit of the NSA would have put the government in a difficult situation to defend its move given the fact that it had consistently maintained that it would not re-engage with India unless Delhi reversed the changes it brought to the disputed Kashmir region in August 2019.

India unilaterally revoked the special status of the disputed territory, triggering a new phase of tensions between the two neighbours and diminishing any chance of rapprochement.

Earlier this year the two sides opened back channels to find some way out of the current impasse. Those contacts achieved partial success as the two sides agreed to renew the ceasefire along the Line of Control (LoC) in February. But after that the process came to a halt after the federal cabinet shot down a proposal to resume trade ties with India.

The Indian invitation was a departure from New Delhi’s policy of seeking Pakistan’s diplomatic isolation. This renewed hopes that the two countries might seek some engagement. But Pakistan’s decision not to send the NSA to India indicated that there was no possibility of any forward movement in the near future.