Pakistan is at a “loss” to understand whether the Narendra Modi government has any Pakistan policy at all, said the country’s former foreign secretary Salman Bashir, noting that a lot of work was done during the UPA regime which needs to be revived.
Bashir said this during a discussion on 'India-Pakistan Relations' here which was attended by six former High Commissioners of both India and Pakistan who have served in the two countries since independence.
On a question of whether Pakistan faces the threat of another coup, the retired diplomats replied in the negative, saying their army just provides “inputs” to the civilian government in matters of foreign affairs and national security issues.
“One issue that strikes me is that we need to pick up where we left. In the UPA administration a lot of work was done. It seems to us that all of this is sort of lost. These two years of this present administration, in Pakistan we are at a loss to understand if there is really a Pakistan policy for India at this point in time” Bashir said.
“If you suspend the foreign secretary level talks just because the High Commissioner has met the APHC (All Party Hurriyat Conference) would to me show that all that was done on the back channel side, have been lost. That's the sort of thing that gives us a bit of unease as you are not quite sure where this government wants to take the relationship with Pakistan,” Bashir said.
However, almost all the retired diplomats, including former Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon and Pakistan's former High commissioner to India Aziz Ahmed Khan underlined the need to engage in dialogue to resolve the long-standing disputes.
Satinder K Lambah, former special envoy of then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, said the prerequisites of a continued dialogue between the the neighbours were peace at the borders, no cross-border terrorism and an early end to Mumbai attacks trial among others.
Referring to the recent foreign secretary level talks, Lanbah said it is good that the meet happened, however, he said certain “strange” things happened making the whole issue look “comic”. He was referring to talking points released to media by Pakistan High Commission when the talks were on.
Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry had held talks here on Tuesday during which Indian side had asked Pakistan not to be in denial over the impact of terrorism on bilateral ties while Pakistan harped on Kashmir terming it as the core issue.
The efforts to resume Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue at the Foreign Secretary-level hit a deadlock after the terrorist attack on the Pathankot airbase in January that India said was carried out by militants from the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad terror group.