ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is willing to initiate “meaningful dialogue” with its arch-rival India to resolve all outstanding issues between the two neighbors, the Foreign Office said on Friday, rejecting reports of any planned meeting between Prime Minister Imran Khan with his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi on the sidelines of an upcoming regional summit in Kyrgyzstan.
Prime Minister Khan and India’s Modi are both scheduled to attend a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) on June 13-14. The foreign ministries of both countries have denied any “bilateral meeting” scheduled between the two leaders.
Relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbors showed signs of improvement last month after Khan congratulated Modi on his landslide victory in the general elections. But the chances of resumption of bilateral dialogue any time soon still seem bleak due to an apparent trust deficit between the neighbors.
“It takes two to tango,” Dr. Mohammad Faisal, Foreign Office spokesman, told Arab News on Friday. “We have repeatedly expressed our desire to start a productive dialogue with India, but if they are not interested, we can’t force them.”
He said that Pakistan is not interested in “mere handshakes with Indian leadership” as such gestures in the past have “failed to yield any meaningful result.”
In separate letters to their Indian counterparts earlier this week, Prime Minister Khan and Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi expressed their desire of “working for durable peace and stability in South Asia with peaceful resolution of all outstanding issues, including the Jammu and Kashmir dispute,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement shared with media on Friday.
“Dialogue is the only way to lift people of both the countries out of poverty,” said Prime Minister Khan in the letter addressed to his Indian counterpart. “Pakistan is keen for peace in the region … joint efforts are essential for regional peace and prosperity,” the statement quoted Khan’s letter to Modi.
Khan and Qureshi also emphasised the need to work together, on the basis of “mutual respect and trust,” to address challenges faced by people of both the countries.
Rejecting speculation about the possibility of a meeting between Khan and Modi on the sidelines of the regional moot, Indian foreign ministry spokesman Raveesh Kumar told reporters on Thursday, “to the best of my knowledge, there is no bilateral meeting being planned between the prime minister and PM of Pakistan on the sidelines of the SCO summit.”
The bilateral dialogue between both the countries remains suspended since 2016 after India accused Pakistan of extending support to militant groups in the disputed Muslim-majority Kashmir region with 86,000 square miles of territory. Since 1947, the area remains disputed between India and Pakistan, both countries claim it in full but only control parts of it. The two nations have also fought wars over the territory, but the dispute continues to linger on.
Both the countries stepped back from brink of war in February this year after India accused Pakistan of harboring a militant group that killed over 40 paramilitary Indian troops in the disputed Kashmir region in a suicide attack. Pakistan denies the charge.
Tensions have calmed since, with Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi having an unscheduled and informal meeting with Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj last month on the sidelines of SCO meeting of foreign ministers in Bishkek.
“Until and unless you sit together and find out solutions of the outstanding issues, just a meeting [of PM Khan with Modi] is useless. The target and aim of the dialogue is to make it productive and meaningful,” Faisal added.
