ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: The Foreign Office said on Thursday that Pakistan is ready for talks with India but pre-conditions are not acceptable.
“We have insisted for negotiations on all issues including the core dispute of Jammu and Kashmir,” the Foreign Office Spokesman Qazi Khalilullah said in his weekly media briefing in Islamabad on Thursday.
The security talks between Pakistan and India scheduled for August 24 this year were called off after New Delhi opposed a planned meeting between Pakistani envoy in India and Kashmiri separatist leaders, and also insisted to discuss only terror issue in national security advisors level talks.
Khalilullah said that Pakistan has never shied away from talks with New Delhi.
On September 30, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in his address to the annual session of the United National General Assembly in New York proposed four point peace measures to defuse tension between the two South Asian countries.
The proposed measures included respect of 2003 ceasefire agreement by both Pakistan and India, no use of force under any circumstances, demilitarization of Kashmir and unconditional mutual withdrawal from Siachen Glacier.
The foreign office spokesman maintained that the four-point initiative presented by the prime minister at the UN general assembly is the way forward for reducing tension and resolution of outstanding disputes between Pakistan and India.
On the occasion of UN general assembly annual session, the Pakistani UN ambassador Maleeha Lodhi presented three dossiers to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s office alleging Indian involvement in fomenting unrest in Pakistan.
Qazi Khalilullah said the purpose of handing over dossiers to the UN secretary general was to inform him about the Indian involvement in fomenting terrorism in Pakistan.
“Pakistan will continue to inform the United Nations about its concerns in this regard in future as well,” he added.
In reply to another question about the eruption of violence in India on cow-slaughtering, the foreign office spokesperson said that the country which claims to be a secular state should guarantee the basic rights of minorities.
The spokesman said that attacks on Muslims on the issue of cow slaughtering are beyond comprehension and a cause of concern for the Muslim Ummah.
