KOLKATA, July 30: India remains committed to making peace with Pakistan but the effort will mean little if it does not help curb the movement of militants across the border, India’s defence minister said on Sunday.
Pranab Mukherjee’s comments came just a day before top officials from the two countries hold talks in an attempt to resume a peace process which has been put on ice by bomb blasts in Mumbai.
“Every government of India is committed to peace, with Pakistan, with everybody. Where is the question of wavering? It is not that it has been stopped permanently,” Defence Minister Mukherjee told Reuters in an interview.
“The peace process is a continuing one...but peace for what? It is to ensure that there would be no terrorist infiltration, no terrorist activities aided and abetted by Pakistan,” he said on a flight from New Delhi to Kolkata. “That is the objective of the peace process.”
It was inevitable that India would take steps like putting off peace talks after terror attacks like the Mumbai blasts in which more than 180 people were killed, the minister said.
Asked if a trip by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Islamabad in the near future was a possibility, Mr Mukherjee said there was no such plan at the moment.
The defence minister’s comments coincided with remarks by India’s junior foreign minister that New Delhi would restart peace talks only after Pakistan took action against militants allegedly operating from its territory.
“Talks can only take place when Pakistan realises the need to take firm action,” Anand Sharma told the Times of India in remarks published on Sunday.
“You cannot have a situation where one side overlooks violence, does not act against those who are talking of guns and RDX (Research Developed Explosives) and the killing of innocent people.”
Asked when the next round of peace talks — which were scheduled for July 20-21 in New Delhi but were called off by India — would take place, Mr Sharma said: “There has to be some action (by Pakistan).”
FOREIGN MINISTERS: Meanwhile, the foreign ministers and foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan will hold a meeting in Dhaka on the sidelines of a South Asian conference on Monday and Tuesday.
“There is no cause for alarm. All that has happened so far is postponement of senior official-level talks,” an Indian foreign ministry official told Reuters.
“The Mumbai blasts were a serious development and we had to respond to it. But there is no need to jump to conclusions that the peace process would be allowed to collapse,” he said.
Despite public anger in India against the peace process, New Delhi would not take any step that cannot be reversed, the official added.
“I hope the opportunity at Dhaka isn’t wasted,” Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri said in an interview.—Agencies