Ready to visit New Delhi without any preconditions: Sartaj Aziz

Defending the non-inclusion of meeting Kashmir separatists in Ufa statement, Pakistan’s National Security Advisor Sartaj Aziz today said there was no need to do that because he assumed it would happen as it did in the past.

He said the statement of the India’s External Affairs Ministry that Pakistan has imposed new conditions totally ignored the last sentence of the note, handed over to the Indian High Commission on August 21 that Pakistan was ready to hold talks without any preconditions.

Following Pakistan’s move to call off the NSA-level talks, MEA spokesperson Vikas Swarup said it was unfortunate and that India had only wanted Islamabad to respect the spirit of the Simla and Ufa agreements.

India’s determination not to allow the Hurriyat to be a party to Indo-Pak dialogue was reflected in the detention of one of the separatist leaders Shabbir Shah as soon as he arrived in New Delhi for attending the scheduled reception for Aziz in the Pakistan High Commission on Sunday.

The latest round of recriminations between the two nuclear-armed neighbours leaves the talks, set at a meeting between prime ministers Narendra Modi and Nawaz Sharif in Russian Federation last month, on a knife edge.

“On my part, I am still prepared to go to New Delhi for NSA talks without any preconditions”, Aziz said, accusing the Indian media of creating a controversy out of nothing. If only goal of NSA level talks is to discuss terrorism, then instead of improving prospects for peace it will only intensify the blame game and further vitiate the atmosphere.

Sushma Swaraj said there have been 99 ceasefire violations by Pakistan since the Ufa statement, and also mentioned the attack in Gurdaspur of Punjab and Udhampur in Jammu & Kashmir, where a terrorist was arrested.

The Pakistan Foreign Office said in a statement at night that talks held on the two conditions laid down by Sushma Swaraj would not serve any goal .

Denying that India was imposing conditions on the talks, as Mr. Aziz had alleged, Ms. Swaraj said she was merely “clarifying” the ground rules that had been agreed to at Ufa.

A year ago New Delhi called off foreign secretary-level talks with Islamabad citing reservations over Pakistan’s engagement with Kashmiri separatists ahead of the talks.

Pakistan’s National Security Adviser Sartaj Aziz gestures during…

Aziz said he would carry the dossiers and hoped he gets a chance to hand over them to his Indian counterpart Doval, whom he is scheduled to meet on August 24.