Maleeha Lodhi says Pak won't accept preconditions for talks with India

United Nations: Barely 24 hours after India slammed Pakistan saying it must “give up terror” if it wants to talk, Pakistan scrambled to the UN with a thick anti-India file, alleging Indian involvement in fomenting unrest in Pakistan. Pakistan’s UN ambassador Maleeha Lodhi took the country’s long-running dispute with India to the United Nations Friday. Lodhi presented three dossiers to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s office. Lohdi told The Associated Press the dossiers include information about “India’s involvement and support to terrorism in different parts of Pakistan.” [caption id=“attachment_2453526” align=“alignleft” width=“259”]  File photo[/caption] One dossier relates to Pakistan’s tribal areas, another relates to Karachi, and the third to the southwestern region of Baluchistan, she said. “So the idea is to really go to the international community through the U.N. secretary-general and to expose the kind of destabilizing actions that India is taking against my country.” Pakistan and India have a history of uneasy relations and they have fought two of their three wars over the disputed Kashmir region, which is claimed by both countries. Forces on both sides of the Line of Control, which divides Kashmir, have traded fire several times in recent weeks. Lohdi cited the “escalating tensions in the region” as the reason Islamabad was taking this step. “We believe that these actions must stop,” she said, and she called for a return to dialogue. “We’re ready to go anywhere, at any level, to resume the dialogue process, but this dialogue cannot be on the basis of preconditions.” She said India had not responded to her move, and she said her country was “disappointed” at the response that India’s foreign minister gave to Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s Wednesday speech to the U.N. General Assembly — in which Pakistan offered a four-point peace initiative. She called India’s response the following day “non-serious” and called on India, “Why don’t you put something on the table, too?” On Thursday in New York, India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj hit back powerfully at Pakistan saying it must “give up terror” if the two countries must “sit down and talk.” Addressing the UN General Assembly in Hindi,Swaraj landed a solid left hook to counter Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s four-point peace initiative. “We do not need four points, we need just one - give up terrorism and let us sit down and talk.” Prime Minister Narendra Modi showered praise on Swaraj for the bold tone which was a foregone conclusion after Sharif’s turn at the UN barely 24 hours ago. “Just spoke to SushmaSwaraj ji & congratulated her for the excellent speech at the UN,” Modi tweeted. “None of us can accept that terrorism is a legitimate instrument of statecraft. The world shared our outrage at the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks in which citizens of many nations were helplessly butchered. That the mastermind behind the attack is walking free is an affront to the entire international community,” Swaraj said. AP & FP STAFF