Pakistan, India Reschedule Talks After Air Base Attack

The foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan will not meet on Friday as scheduled, Islamabad said.

Pakistan’s prime minister’s office said in a statement the government had made “considerable progress” in investigating the attack, and it wanted to send a team of special investigators to the Pathankot air base in India.

In a statement the Foreign Office Spokesman Qazi Khalilullah said the two secretaries will hold talks soon.

Confusion surrounded the arrest of Masood as neither the Pakistani government nor the Indian government officially admitted that the terror master-mind has been arrested.

Foreign ministries say talks will resume in “near future” but have not specified a date.. The minister also clarified that he would be arrested “if his involvement in the Pathankot attack is proved”.

To questions on the detention of Azhar, he said, “I am not aware of any such arrest”.

Jaish-e-Mohammad militants are blamed for a 2001 attack on India’s parliament that almost led to a war between the nuclear-armed rivals.

The crackdown on the JeM was an “important and positive first step” in the move to bring to justice the Pathankot attack plotters, he said.

Earlier even as Pakistan began cracking down on terror outfit JeM, a decision on the foreign secretary level talks will be taken by India taken on 14 January.

“I think certain positive measures have now been taken to ensure that we continue that momentum and the fact that the two Foreign Secretaries have agreed to reschedule through mutual agreement their meeting is a very positive indication”, he said.

Seven soldiers were martyred in the Pathankot terror attack.

Foreign office spokesman said Pakistan and Iran enjoy good brotherly and neighborly relations.

A Pakistan minister broke the country’s silence on the arrest of Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Maulana Masood Azhar and told Dawn News that Azhar is in “protective custody”.

In the night, the Pakistani government followed up with another announcement of setting up a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) comprising security and military officials to probe whether any Pakistani individual or organisation was involved in the Pathankot attack on January 2.