News
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Now Indian foreign secy’s turn to visit Pakistan
* External Affairs minister says ‘we must move step by step’
* Manmohan’s initiative for holding talks ‘in good faith’By Iftikhar Gilani
NEW DELHI: India may send its Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao to Islamabad later this month to ‘cool down tempers’ and to arrange a meeting between the prime ministers of the two countries, External Affairs Minister S M Krishna said on Monday.
“The Pakistan foreign secretary came to India for talks, so, perhaps it is now the Indian foreign secretary’s turn to go to Pakistan. Let us move step by step,” Krishna said. He said India has already taken the initiative and provided the backdrop for talks between the foreign secretaries of the two countries.
Despite talks between India and Pakistan during Pakistani Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir’s visit to India, nothing fruitful came out of them and the two sides ended the interaction with a pledge to ‘’keep in touch’’, signalling that relations remain frosty. There is speculation that further talks between the two sides could take place at the end of March.
Krishna said, “Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has taken an initiative in good faith to hold foreign secretary level talks with Islamabad.”
Asked if the Indian prime minister will meet his Pakistani counterpart in Washington in April on the sidelines of the nuclear security summit, the minister was non-committal, saying, “Keep speculating.”
Krishna further said India was awaiting the findings of the Afghan government’s investigations into the terror attack on its military personnel and officials in Kabul. “We have requested Afghanistan to go into the depth of finding out where the conspiracy to attack our embassy was hatched... we are awaiting the findings of the Afghanistan government, “ he said.
After the attacks, Krishna said, “the level of security has been beefed up and hopefully such incidents will not occur again.”
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk