New Delhi, Feb 17 (Inditop.com) The upcoming foreign secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan were not a resumption of the composite dialogue and would focus only on terror, Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna said here Wednesday.
“Let the nation not be mistaken that composite dialogue is being renewed. Composite dialogue was suspended with very good reason from the Indian point of view. The issue that we raised remained to be addressed by Pakistan with a degree of seriousness,” Krishna told CNN-IBN.
The minister said that he did not know what issues Pakistan Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir would raise but “the brief for our secretary (Nirupama Rao) is that terror is the centre and focus point of talks”.
India had suspended the composite dialogue process after the November 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai and meet for the first time since in New Delhi on Feb 25. Soon after the date was decided, a bomb blast ripped through a bakery in Pune Saturday killing 11 people.
Krishna asserted that the foreign secretary-level talks would only take place “in order to carry forward the core issue as far as India is concerned about terror and terror driven activities emanating from Pakistan”.
“We thought that it is necessary to engage Pakistan in this very critical area of terror,” he added.
On the criticism for talking with Pakistan, Krishna said: “If there is a better suggestion in terms of alternative the government is willing to consider those alternatives. If the opposition in their wisdom emanating from being out of government can suggest – the government is not unwilling to look at them”.
