There is international pressure always on India to talk to Pakistan but New Delhi will do what it needs to do to get Pakistan to act against terrorists, top government sources have said, in response t
There is international pressure always on India to talk to Pakistan but New Delhi will do what it needs to do to get Pakistan to act against terrorists, top government sources have said, in response to the current situation in which foreign secretary-level talks are delayed because of lack of action on the part of Pakistan against terror outfit JeM.
Sources also said India would continue to oppose sale of F-16s by the US to Pakistan. Sources said that Pakistan had, for the first time, accepted that the terrorists who carried out the attack on the Pathankot airbase were from its soil, as indicated by its statements that it would examine the evidence given to it by India.
Sources said whenever India and Pakistan aren’t engaged in dialogue, there is “international pressure”, seeking to know why two nuclear-armed countries aren’t talking. The reference is a thinly-veiled one towards the United States which has always pushed for dialogue between the two neighbours.
But top government sources asserted that India would do all it can to get Pakistan to act against terrorists operating from its soil, which is India’s core concern.
In the wake of the Pathankot terror attack, India and Pakistan had last month mutually agreed to defer talks to the “very near future” but the talks now seem stuck, with Pakistan yet to take any significant action against the JeM and its chief Maulana Masood Azhar who are suspected to be behind the attack. India is still hoping that Pakistan at least files an FIR against the terror-accused which will at least indicate some willingness to take action.
“We have not accepted that the F-16 (fighter aircraft that the US wants to sell to Pakistan) are for counter-terror (as the US claims),” sources said, adding India remains opposed to any such sale. Sources also indicated that while India and the US are not fully on the same page, so far as mounting adequate pressure on Pakistan to act against terrorists on its soil is concerned, the two countries are on the same page on many issues towards the East, an obvious reference towards assessment of China and the situation in the South China Sea. Top sources however reiterated that there was no move on the part of the two countries to conduct joint patrols in the South China Sea, as some media reports had earlier claimed.
