India is willing to discuss all issues that may be raised by Pakistan in the June 24 India-Pak Foreign Secretary-level talks as it approaches the parleys in an “exploratory mode” amid indications that Pakistan may raise the contentious issue of Kashmir and ask for the withdrawal of Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act from the State.
“We are not going there in accusatory mode but we are going there in exploratory mode,” a top official source said in New Delhi while maintaining that India will respond to all issues, including contentious, if raised by Pakistan, with confidence.
When Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao meets her Pakistani counterpart Salman Bashir in Islamabad on Thursday, the agenda from the Indian side will be to convey serious concerns over continuing terror by Pakistan-based groups, speedy conclusion of the trial of those involved in 26/11 attacks, infiltration, ceasefire violations and drug trafficking from across the Line of Control (LoC).
People-to-people contact, humanitarian issues and trade across the LoC in Kashmir will also be raised during the meeting.
Emphasising that Pakistan needs to tackle terror emanating from its soil against India, the source said it further complicates the complex relationship, the two countries have. The source said it was Pakistan’s responsibility to ensure that groups operating from its soil should not be able to carry attacks against India as any such strike in future will have a very “damaging impact“.
Official sources said India has already sought a “detailed response” from Pakistan on information about the ongoing Mumbai attacks trial and all the investigative links under their possession.
They said the case of Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed, the mastermind of Mumbai attacks, will also figure in Home Minister P. Chidambaram’s meeting with his Pakistani counterpart Rahman Malik on the sidelines of the SAARC Interior Ministers meeting on June 25 in Islamabad.
Maintaining that India will try to see how it could go about bridging “trust-deficit” as mandated by the two Prime Ministers in their meeting in Thimphu on April 29, the sources said there will also be an attempt to see what all steps can be put in place to do so.
