Responding to question during his meeting with a group of Pakistani journalists visiting India on Thursday, he said, “I have positive expectations about my upcoming visit to Pakistan, yet one meeting will not solve the problems,” he said, alleging that, “There are terrorist camps working inside Pakistan and they should be dismantled.”
“How can we believe that Pakistan is not aware of these camps? If there is a single terrorist camp in India – tell me, and we will take care of it.”
“There is a political will that is required on the part of Pakistan – India has the political will,” said the Indian Foreign Minister.
Terrorism, he said, cannot be fought selectively – it has to be across the board.
Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao, who was also at the meeting with the Pakistani journalists, said that Pakistan has no case regarding India’s involvement in Balochistan, claiming that Interior Minister Rehman Malik has not handed over any dossier to the Indian government regarding their involvement in the troubled province.
Rao said that India is not involved in the Balochistan insurgency. “India considers Balochistan a part of Pakistan and India wants a stable and peaceful Pakistan,” she said.
She emphasised that progress in normalising Indo-Pak relations depends on Pakistan taking credible action against those responsible for the Mumbai attacks.
She said: “For us the Mumbai attacks is the core issue. We have provided Pakistan with information in the dossiers we have given to the Pakistani government and we wait for Pakistan to take action.”
She described the recent round of Indo-Pak foreign secretary level talks as productive and hoped that the July 15 Islamabad meeting between the foreign ministers of the two countries will further help in removing the existing trust deficit between the two neighbours.
Krishna also made it clear that India is not involved in creating any kind of trouble in Pakistan. He said “our current rate of growth is 8.6 per cent and we want to raise it to 10 per cent to keep on with our economic growth so it is in our interest to have a peaceful neighbourhood”.
He said that as elected politicians he and his government colleagues must take into account the public opinion “and there has been a tremendous change in our public opinion since the Mumbai attacks”.
He said the people of India will only allow us to move forward with improving relations with Pakistan if they see Pakistan taking credible action against those responsible for the Mumbai atrocity.
He said that the resolution of the Kashmir dispute will take time. He added: “Kashmir issue is 60 years old and it cannot be resolved in one meeting. It will take many, many meetings to resolve this dispute”.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 2nd, 2010.
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