ISLAMABAD, Jan 22: The Foreign Office said on Tuesday that India’s response to President Pervez Musharraf’s recent address to the nation had not been so forthcoming but added that, apparently, it had a positive effect.

At his daily press briefing, FO Spokesman Aziz A. Khan expressed the hope that by now the sincerity of president’s address would have registered and they (Indians) were talking to resume talks about resolving all the issues peacefully.

The spokesman said this when asked for his assessment of India’s response to the president’s address.

The spokesman said that Pakistan had done its best, and now it would wait for an Indian response. “Now the ball is in India’s court,” he said.

Answering India’s charges that Pakistan was continuing with terrorism, the spokesman emphatically said they were baseless charges and were exposed by the facts that Pakistan had not only condemned terrorism but had joined international coalition to combat it and taken measures locally to eliminate it.

In reply to a question, military spokesman Maj-Gen Rashid Qureshi said that the situation along the international border, the Line of Control and the Working Boundary where the Indian forces were massed against Pakistan, remained unchanged; there was no lessening of tension. So the position that Pakistan had taken to ensure that any misadventure was met with an appropriate response, was also the same, he added.

Maj-Gen Qureshi said that India, during the last couple of weeks, had violated Pakistan’s airspace on the Line of Control when gathering intelligence information by its remote control pilotless vehicles.

In reply to a question, he said that while his assessment was based on military situation on the ground, the assessment of US Secretary of State Colin Powell was based on the latter’s diplomatic and political interaction here.

The FO spokesman said he was not aware of an anticipated meeting between the Indian and Pakistani officials. But a joint Indus Commission meeting between the two sides was held in Lahore as stipulated in the terms of the commission, which, he pointed out, had withstood two previous wars and served its purpose well. Referring to a report about the construction of a facility on the Chenab River, the FO spokesman said information was being sought from the Indus Commission before any further action could be considered.—H.A