Kashmir must be part of agenda: Pak wants talks with India without pre-conditions

Islamabad: Pakistan on Thursday said it favours talks with India on all outstanding issues including Kashmir but without any pre-conditions. “Pakistan will also not accept any pre-conditions for talks with India,” said Qazi Khalilullah, Foreign Office (FO) spokesman while addressing his weekly press conference in Islamabad. However, he hastened to add that any talks with New Delhi must include the Kashmir issue. “Any formal talks with New Delhi would have Kashmir as part of the agenda,” he said. [caption id=“attachment_2402012” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Ajit Doval and Sartaj Aziz. Image courtesy: Wikimedia[/caption] Khalilullah also said that Pakistan wanted a peaceful solution of the Kashmir issue in accordance with the UN resolutions. He added that there was no proposal under consideration for the meeting of national security advisors of Pakistan and India on the sidelines of UN annual session in New York later in September. On the eve of cancellation of last month’s talks with his Indian counterpart Ajit Doval, Pakistan’s National Security Advisor Sartaj Aziz had said he would hand over dossiers on terrorism to him in New York. The first-ever NSA-level talks between the two countries were called off, hours after India made it clear that discussions on Kashmir and a meeting with separatists will not be acceptable. Aziz, while responding to Union Minister Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore’s comments that the government could resort to a covert or special operation to bring to justice fugitives taking shelter in Pakistan, said if there is any such thing, “a befitting response will be given”. “If anyone has this notion that after such an attempt they can get away with it, it is their wishful thinking,” he told reporters. Meanwhile, Fatemi told the Chinese daily, “the threat to Pakistan is from our neighbouring country.” Fatemi said Pakistan has made it very clear that the India-Pakistan problems, “which are many and serious, can only be resolved through a dialogue process.” “We are willing and prepared to enter to a series of dialogues with India, any time, any place, bilaterally, regionally. We are prepared for the UN to play a role in it. We are prepared for the secretary general to play a role in it,” he said. Asked about reports that Pakistan is producing 20 nuclear weapons a year and could become the world’s third biggest nuclear power in the next decade or so, he said western media has spread negative stories about Pakistan and China. On $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, he said, “this is a project that will take many years and many billions of dollars.” “It will transform the entire region because it will establish connectivity among the countries of the region, bringing economic growth and development, contributing to the prosperity, as well as strengthening peace and stability in the entire region,” he said. PTI