Pakistan is not desperate for talks, says Aziz

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is not desperate to resume peace talks and India never opened a window of opportunity for dialogue, Pakistani foreign policy chief Sartaj Aziz

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is not desperate to resume peace talks and India never opened a window of opportunity for dialogue, Pakistani foreign policy chief Sartaj Aziz has said.

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The foreign affairs adviser to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif made the remarks during a television news show on Sunday. His comments were in response to Indian defence minister Manohar Parrikar’s statement about the “slowly closing” window of goodwill and dialogue with Pakistan that “separates terrorists between good ones and bad ones”.

He said India had “never opened a window of opportunity for dialogue with Pakistan and all developments in this regard were sabotaged when talks were postponed after the Pathankot attack ”. India has blamed t he Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist group for the January 2 attack on the strategic airbase in Pathankot in which seven soldiers and four suicide attackers were killed.

“It is a very strange thing to say as it was decided here on December 9 that the dialogue would resume but then the Pathankot incident occurred and everything vanished into thin air,” Aziz said on Sunday.

At the same time, he said Pakistan is “not desperate for talks” and there is no restlessness for dialogue.

“If India continues to repeat the old allegation of terrorism when it comes to the negotiating table, it must remember terrorism is part of the composite dialogue that Pakistan proposes,” he said.

He told the audience that if the region has to see peace, it has to see dialogue first. “They (India) say that they will talk if we (Pakistan) make some progress on terrorism, but we say that they should talk on all issues, including Kashmir.” (With inputs from HTC, New Delhi)