‘Engagement with Pak at time of our choosing’

NEW DELHI: India will engage with Pakistan diplomatically but the date and time of such an engagement will be of India’s choosing, foreign secretary S Jaishankar

NEW DELHI: India will engage with Pakistan diplomatically but the date and time of such an engagement will be of India’s choosing, foreign secretary S Jaishankar has told a parliamentary panel.

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The country’s top diplomat was on Tuesday briefing members of the foreign affairs panel on Indian army’s September 29 attacks on militant bases in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

“We had been engaging with Pakistan and will do so in future. But right now, we don’t have any fixed calendar even for talks at the secretary level,” sources quoted Jaishankar as saying. He was responding to a query whether India, which was at an advantage after the surgical strikes, wanted to resume dialogue with the neighbouring country.

The strikes had given Islamabad a taste of what India was capable of, Jaishankar said.

The army had conducted targeted operations across the line of control earlier as well but those were not publicised, he said.

“If you are asking whether our troops crossed the LoC and conducted calibrated operations before, the answer is yes. If you are asking if they achieved their targets and returned to India, the answer is also yes,” Jaishankar was quoted as saying by two panel members who didn’t wish to be identified.

“The only difference… this time we announced it a day later,” he said, adding there were diplomatic reasons for going public but didn’t elaborate on what those reasons were.

A week ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, too, talked about shifting from yuddha (war) to Buddha.

“Sometimes war becomes inevitable because of the existing situations. But, we are those who can move ahead from yuddha (war) to Buddha. We strike a balance between the two,” Modi said in a speech at Varanasi.

The lightning strikes ratcheted up tensions with Pakistan. They were seen as India’s first military response to an attack on an army base by suspected Pakistani militants in Kashmir’s Uri on September 18 that left 19 soldiers dead.

India has since stepped up diplomatic offensive to isolate Pakistan, which dismissed the strikes as cross-border firing, for promoting terror.

The raid triggered a political storm at home. Opposition parties, which earlier asked for a proof of the army action, now accuse the government of trying to gain electoral mileage out of the operation.

But army vice-chief lieutenant general Bipin Rawat, who also briefed the panel, were non-committal on submitting proof.

“Our boys went for a swift, time-bound operation. They were given specific targets but not told to collect evidence,” he said. “However, we are trying to collate some proof.”

The government has said the army submitted proof of the operation but there was no need to make it public.

Panel chairman and Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, party colleague Satyavrat Chaturvedi and CPM’s Mohammad Salim questioned the foreign secretary on militants continuously targeting the army and paramilitary establishments in the Valley even after the cross-LoC raid. Some “terror launch pads” were still active, Jaishankar said.

There was no plan to stop people to people contact, Jaishnakar told the panel, as Pakistani artistes and films face a ban in the country.

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi also sat through the briefing.

BJP’s Sharad Tripathi, too, had a question. He wanted to know from special secretary (internal security) Mahesh Singlaif the government would review the security of parliamentarians.

This is the second time in week that a parliamentary panel was briefed on the surgical strikes. The defence panel met last week but no questions were allowed.