NEW DELHI: Action on terror trumps any desire for diplomatic dialogue with Pakistan, foreign secretary S Jaishankar said on Wednesday, in the clearest statement yet that India would not agree to foreign secretary talks until Pakistan took clear action against the perpetrators of the Pathankot terror attack. Jaishankar's remarks explain why there is continued silence on resumption of official dialogue with Pakistan.
"In the aftermath of a terror attack, if you ask me what is the priority, dealing with terror or diplomatic dialogue then the answer is obvious," he said.
Addressing the Raisina Dialogue — the first big international conversation on geopolitics, organised by MEA and thinktank Observer Research Foundation (ORF) — Jaishankar said, "After the Pathankot attack, the governments of India and Pakistan have been in touch, mainly through NSAs. My counterpart and I have also spoken and the PMs also spoke once. The picture you see is of parallel processes."
Jaishankar clarified that after the Heart of Asia conference in Islamabad, India and Pakistan moved to set up the modalities of an official-level dialogue. But the Pathankot attack set back the foreign secretary dialogue as well as other high-level exchanges.
Despite the Modi government attempting to re-calibrate the rocky bilateral relations with PM's unannounced visit to Lahore on 25 December, Jaishankar admitted that terrorism was a "significant obstacle" to normalising relations with Pakistan. "Most people in this country want to treat Pakistan as a normal neighbour. But the fact is that there are obstacles and we know what the obstacles are... " India, he said, wanted a "modern relationship with Pakistan" but there had to be a change in attitude inside Pakistan, and terrorism was "central".
When the foreign secretary-level talks were postponed in mid-January, MEA had stressed that it would resume in the "very near future", but in the ensuing weeks, it became very clear that the effort made to delink terrorism from talks was not going anywhere. Pakistan too believed that the bilateral engagement would proceed on two parallel and independent tracks — the NSA talks on terrorism and security and the foreign secretary-level talks on all other issues. Within the Indian government too there were optimistic sections who believed the de-hyphenation could be maintained.
Two months after Pathankot, this hope has dried up. The Modi government, like its predecessors, has found it politically impossible to engage Pakistan in a normalisation process while little action is seen on terrorism. In recent weeks, Sartaj Aziz, Pakistan PM's foreign policy adviser admitted Masood Azhar, chief of the terror group Jaish-e-Muhammed was in "detention", though an FIR filed on the case failed to name any person.
On Tuesday, Aziz, addressing a press conference in Washington DC with John Kerry, said, "It is unfortunate that the agreement on resuming the dialogue process was disrupted by the attack on Pathankot airbase on January 2. Pakistan has taken some very important steps in the aftermath of this incident. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called the Indian Prime Minister immediately after this attack and assured of Pakistan's support in the investigation. Since then, national security advisers are maintaining frequent contacts. A case has been registered, and the special investigation team is likely to visit in the next few days. We, therefore, hope that the foreign secretary-level talks will be scheduled very soon."
The foreign secretary-level talks talks on the table, Aziz stated that Pakistan wanted "resolution of all outstanding issues, including the Kashmir dispute, through resumption of full-scale and uninterrupted dialogue with India. We would also propose a mechanism to address our respective concern on terrorism."
"In the aftermath of a terror attack, if you ask me what is the priority, dealing with terror or diplomatic dialogue then the answer is obvious," he said.
Addressing the Raisina Dialogue — the first big international conversation on geopolitics, organised by MEA and thinktank Observer Research Foundation (ORF) — Jaishankar said, "After the Pathankot attack, the governments of India and Pakistan have been in touch, mainly through NSAs. My counterpart and I have also spoken and the PMs also spoke once. The picture you see is of parallel processes."
Jaishankar clarified that after the Heart of Asia conference in Islamabad, India and Pakistan moved to set up the modalities of an official-level dialogue. But the Pathankot attack set back the foreign secretary dialogue as well as other high-level exchanges.
Despite the Modi government attempting to re-calibrate the rocky bilateral relations with PM's unannounced visit to Lahore on 25 December, Jaishankar admitted that terrorism was a "significant obstacle" to normalising relations with Pakistan. "Most people in this country want to treat Pakistan as a normal neighbour. But the fact is that there are obstacles and we know what the obstacles are... " India, he said, wanted a "modern relationship with Pakistan" but there had to be a change in attitude inside Pakistan, and terrorism was "central".
When the foreign secretary-level talks were postponed in mid-January, MEA had stressed that it would resume in the "very near future", but in the ensuing weeks, it became very clear that the effort made to delink terrorism from talks was not going anywhere. Pakistan too believed that the bilateral engagement would proceed on two parallel and independent tracks — the NSA talks on terrorism and security and the foreign secretary-level talks on all other issues. Within the Indian government too there were optimistic sections who believed the de-hyphenation could be maintained.
Two months after Pathankot, this hope has dried up. The Modi government, like its predecessors, has found it politically impossible to engage Pakistan in a normalisation process while little action is seen on terrorism. In recent weeks, Sartaj Aziz, Pakistan PM's foreign policy adviser admitted Masood Azhar, chief of the terror group Jaish-e-Muhammed was in "detention", though an FIR filed on the case failed to name any person.
On Tuesday, Aziz, addressing a press conference in Washington DC with John Kerry, said, "It is unfortunate that the agreement on resuming the dialogue process was disrupted by the attack on Pathankot airbase on January 2. Pakistan has taken some very important steps in the aftermath of this incident. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called the Indian Prime Minister immediately after this attack and assured of Pakistan's support in the investigation. Since then, national security advisers are maintaining frequent contacts. A case has been registered, and the special investigation team is likely to visit in the next few days. We, therefore, hope that the foreign secretary-level talks will be scheduled very soon."
The foreign secretary-level talks talks on the table, Aziz stated that Pakistan wanted "resolution of all outstanding issues, including the Kashmir dispute, through resumption of full-scale and uninterrupted dialogue with India. We would also propose a mechanism to address our respective concern on terrorism."
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