NEW DELHI, March 9: India said on Saturday it was neither interested in resuming bilateral talks with Pakistan nor was it planning to withdraw troops from the border until its problems with cross-border raids by Kashmiri militants were addressed by Islamabad in a verifiable way.
And the presence of Information Minister Sushma Swaraj in Islamabad appears to have done little to help ease even the much simpler standoff — a raging media war between the two countries, The Times of India reported on Saturday.
Responding to Pakistan Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider’s offer to hold talks with his Indian counterpart on all manner of issues, which presumably include the request by New Delhi to repatriate or extradite 20 alleged criminals said to be sheltered by Islamabad, Indian Home Minister Lal Krishan Advani said there was no need to hold talks now between the two countries but only a need to address India’s concerns.
The Indian Express quoted Haider as declining to comment on India’s list of 20 criminals.
“Refusing to comment on the Indian list, Haider pointed out in turn that there were a number of Pakistani terrorists living in India, wanted by Pakistan,” the newspaper said in a dispatch from Islamabad.
But, Haider also said, “We have not given India a list of these people but these are small issues, the main issue is to talk.” Asked if there could be an exchange of terrorists, Haider, according to the newspaper, said yes in his own way. Exchange ho sakta hai, kuchch bhi ho sakta hai.
Advani, currently weathering a major row with the Indian opposition who are demanding his resignation over the government’s handling of the violence in Gujarat, responded to Haider’s gesture in the only way he knows best, by rejecting it, albeit with an all too familiar smile.
“I don’t believe there is any need for talks with Pakistan now,” he said at a function to celebrate the paramilitary industrial security police. “What’s needed is proof on the ground that our worries over cross-border terrorism are addressed, which includes our demand for the repatriation of 20 terrorists from Pakistan.”
Advani said he was surprised by Pakistan’s invitation, which he came to know through the morning newspapers. “My birthplace (Karachi) is there. I had spent the first 20 years of my life there. It is natural for me to feel happy when I get an invitation to go there. I had visited it only once in 1978 in the last 50 years,” a nostalgic Advani said.
On the other hand, Defence Minister George Fernandes, grappling with an internal pressure on the army to help ease the communal flare-up in Gujarat and with demands for their deployment in the volatile town of Ayodhya too, pointedly rubbished reports nevertheless of a troop withdrawal from the border with Pakistan.
“There is no question of India withdrawing its troops from the border till the conditions are met by Islamabad,” the Press Trust of India quoted Fernandes as saying. “India has not started withdrawing troops from the border. There is no truth in such reports,” he said on the sidelines of a seminar of the Naval Foundation in New Delhi.
Fernandes described as “rubbish” claims made by a high-ranking Pakistani intelligence source quoted recently as saying that India had started withdrawing troops from the border and that the Air Force had been given “stand down” instructions, the PTI said.
PTI quoted Swaraj as echoing Fernandes in an interview with PTV.
But while Swaraj is in Islamabad ostensibly to cement intra-Saarc information-related ties, the Times of India reported that Indian officials were not happy with PTV showing old clips of the Gujarat violence to project them as an orgy of continuing mayhem.
“We have proof to show that shots of deserted streets in Kerala have been passed off as clips of Gujarat during the bandh call that was given by the VHP last month,” the Times quoted an official as saying.
The report on Times internet site said officials of the information ministry were convinced that PTV has stage-managed burning of mosques that have been passed off as being destroyed in India.
“Sources in the information ministry, however, say that though all efforts are being made to counter false propaganda carried out by PTV, there are no immediate plans to ban the state-sponsored channel,” the Times said.
In the last few months, given the India-Pakistan tension on the borders, Doordarshan has come out with specific programmes to counter PTV’s anti-India propaganda, the report said.