Islamabad, June 26 (IANS) Pakistan and India need to get together to defeat terrorism, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said Saturday, describing terror as the ‘common enemy’ of both countries.
‘We have to, in my view, join hands to defeat the common enemy,’ the minister told Times Now television, a day after Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram met his Pakistani counterpart Rehman Malik.
Qureshi said his own meeting with Chidambaram was ‘good, candid. He put across the Indian point of view, the Indian concern. I put across the Pakistani perception’.
Qureshi said terrorism was not just a regional problem but a global one.
‘It is important to sit together, it is important to discuss in a frank manner… I am confident that these meetings will develop into positive outcomes. We have made the right beginning.’
Qureshi, however, reiterated that India’s decision to suspend the bilateral dialogue with Pakistan in the wake of the November 2008 Mumbai terror attack was wrong.
‘The suspension of the dialogue was not correct. Tell me, who benefited? Not india, not Pakistan. The net beneficiary were the terrorist forces.’
He added, referring to terrorists: ‘We have to see how we can collectively defeat their designs.’
The minister said that Pakistan today was itself a victim of terrorism. ‘It is in our interest ot make tangible progress (in India-Pakistan relations), and we will make progress.’
