NEW DELHI, April 13 Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has said that a climate of trust and cooperation with India would ease the pressure enormously on their shared border to allow Islamabad to direct its energies on the volatile western front.

“If we have to concentrate on the western border obviously we have to be comfortable on the eastern side,” Mr Qureshi said in an interview broadcast by CNN-IBN channel on Monday.

“If there are tensions between Pakistan and India on the eastern border, we lose focus. It is in our mutual interest that we remain focused on the western border.”

Asked for Pakistans response to the question of Kashmir not being part of the new US strategy, Mr Qureshi said “We have outstanding issues and Kashmir is one of them. For normalisation ... We have to address them. We had in place ... the composite dialogue. Unfortunately, the tragic Mumbai incident put that on hold.”

Mr Qureshi said he was interested in restarting that process, but said he was not willing to accept the conditions spelled out by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in London recently.—Jawed Naqvi