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| April 30, 2003 | Wednesday | Safar 27, 1424 |
FM reiterates willingness to reduce tension
NEW DELHI, April 29: A day after the prime ministers of India and Pakistan made an attempt to usher in a thaw in their frozen ties with a telephone chat, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehamood Kasuri said on Tuesday that suspicion was the biggest enemy of peace.
Mr Kasuri told India’s NDTV news channel that Islamabad was ready to do whatever it could to reduce tensions between the two countries if Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee paid a state visit to Pakistan.
Mr Kasuri said the telephonic talk between the prime ministers was a good start and was confident that it would bear fruitful results in easing tensions.
“The biggest enemy to peace is suspicion and when people start talking to each other, half the solution is found,” Mr Kasuri asserted. He, however, warned that many people might not like to see any improvement in Indo-Pakistan relations and would try to derail the peace process.
In a separate interview with the Voice of America, monitored by the Press Trust of India, Mr Kasuri expressed the hope that the two sides would third time lucky in kickstarting a new peace process.
“The Prime Minister (Jamali) extended an invitation to Vajpayee to visit Pakistan. I hope he will do so quickly and if he does come he will receive a warm welcome and we will do all we can to help reducing tensions between two countries,” Mr Kasuri told VOA.
“It is incumbent on the leadership of the two countries to try and make sure that this time their talks lead to some concrete results, as they say in English, third time lucky. May be after Lahore and Agra, it will be lucky this time,” Mr Kasuri said.
On Mr Vajpayee’s charges about cross-border terrorism, Kasuri declined to give a direct answer.
“You see there are always two ways of looking at things. You can look at things positively and you can look at things negatively, the glass is either half full or half empty. I prefer to look at it as half full. Now I do not wish to respond to a statement of that nature,” he said, adding all such issues could be resolved if Mr Vajpayee visited Islamabad.
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