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| Foreign secretary level talks deferred | | | It was expected. It was anticipated that the talks between the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan,scheduled to be held in Islamabad on Friday, will face postponement.The reason was simple.On Wednesday the electronic and print media blazed the news of the arrest of Jash-e-Mohammad Chief,Masood Azhar,his brother and a large number of JeM activists. But till Thursday evening Islamabad could not officially confirm the arrest of Masood Azhar who,in the eyes of New Delhi,had engineered the Pathankot terror strike on the airbase in which seven security personnel were killed.Talks between India and Pakistan's foreign secretaries will not take place as scheduled, Pakistan said a development that comes in the wake of uncertainty created by the terror attack on the Pathankot air base.In fact India had remained firm this time though the schedule for proposed foreign secretary level talks was finalized over two months ago.India wanted firm action against all those who had masterminded the terror attack on the Pathankot air base.Though media reports had stated that action had been initiated against Masood Azhar his close associates by arresting them and by sealing some of the JeM offices but the same could not be confirmed by the establishment in Islamabad..
Finding that New Delhi was not ready to hold the proposed talks unless action was taken against all those who had engineered the attack on Pathankot air base Islamabad devised a new way of defusing the situation by announcing that the scheduled for talks was being revised. Foreign Office spokesman Qazi Khalilullah said that both sides were holding consultations to reschedule the talks.Pakistan also did not confirm the arrest of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar over which India has also expressed some reservations."I am not aware of any such arrest. I don't have anything else apart from the statement issued by the PMO on Wednesday," Khalilullah said.After a high-level meeting, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's office issued a statement on Wednesday that said that "several individuals" belonging to JeM had been apprehended in connection with the Pathankot terror attack and some of its offices traced and sealed.External Affairs Ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup also said India had no conformation about Azhar's arrest.JeM chief Azhar is suspected of having masterminded the pre-dawn strike on an Air Force base in Pathankot on January 2.
There has been uncertainty over whether talks will be held as planned since, with India even hinting that the talks could depend on Pakistan's response to "actionable intelligence" it provided. First of all Pakistan wanted additional information about the militants who had attacked Pathankot air base.At one stage Islamabad had denied that the phone calls had been made from phone numbers belonging to Pakistan.This way Islamabad continued to trigger one issue or the other forcing the two sides to set a new schedule for the foreign secretary level talks. What is intriguing is the way Pakistan has been denying its link with those terrorists who had attacked pathankot air base.At one stage many voices multiplied within Pakistan blaming India for having engineered the terror strike on the air base simply to malign Pakistan.Why should India do it when scores of intelligence agencies round the globe keep a watch on the activities of terror groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan? Why should Indian agencies enact the terror strike drama in which seven precious lives of security personnel including one officer of the rank of a colonel were lost.Islamabad ingeneral and Nawaz Sharif in particular should know it that Modi,who has,in the past,thrown to winds basic diplomatic conventions by visiting Pakistan a couple of times and by meeting Nawaz Sharif on a number of occasions, is a man of peace and wants to improve ties with all countries,especially those nations that are in the neighbourhood of India. And Islamabad is wrong if it treats Modi's simplicity for some sort of weakness.He is a tough guy and does not want terror and talks to coexist. |
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