India calls for meeting of foreign ministers with Pakistan


[ad_1]

NEW DELHI – India has canceled a planned meeting between its Foreign Minister and his Pakistani counterpart on the sidelines of the US General Assembly session in New York this month, exacerbating tensions between long-term rivals dated.

Foreign Affairs Spokesman Raveesh Kumar said Friday that India's decision to leave the meeting, announced a day earlier, followed the assassination of an Indian border guard in Kashmir .

The Indian government's decision to talk to Pakistan has been sharply criticized by the Congress party and other opposition groups after rebels in Indian-controlled Kashmir killed border guards and took them out. removed a dozen. The bodies riddled with bullets of the three policemen were found Friday. India accuses Pakistan of arming and training insurgents, an accusation that Pakistan denies.

Thursday's announcement of the planned meeting was seen as an encouraging sign for resuming talks between South Asian armed neighbors. Pakistan and India have fought two of their three wars since independence in 1947 over the disputed region of Kashmir, divided between the two countries but sought by everyone in its entirety.

Pakistan said that he regretted the decision of India not to meet, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, saying that "the applause can only be done with one hand ".

He said Pakistan wanted peace and stability in the region, but that India may be more concerned about "domestic politics".

"We want to get out of the past and we have taken a step forward, but India has regrettably taken a step back," he said in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.

Pakistani Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry said that "an extremist segment in India does not want to see Pakistan and India moving towards dialogue to solve problems."

The Indian spokesman said that New Delhi had agreed to hold the meeting in response to a letter from Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan to his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi, stressing the need to make positive changes, a mutual desire to peace and a willingness to discuss terrorism.

"Now it is clear that behind Pakistan's proposal for talks to make a fresh start, Pakistan's demonic agenda is exposed and the true face of Pakistan's new Prime Minister, Imran Khan, has been revealed to the world. office, "he said in a statement.

Any conversation with Pakistan in such an environment would make no sense, Kumar said.

The Foreign Ministry of Pakistan, in an official statement, called the comments about Khan "very unhappy" and "against all standards of civilized discourse and diplomatic communication".

Rejecting the Indian allegations, the statement said that the reasons given by the Indian party for the cancellation of the meeting, within 24 hours after its public confirmation, were "quite unconvincing since its agreement to hold the meeting bilateral. "

Relations between India and Pakistan have deteriorated since Modi came to power in 2014.

___

The author of the associated press, Zarar Khan, in Islamabad, Pakistan, contributed to this report.

Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, disseminated, rewritten or redistributed.

[ad_2]Source link