India Wanted Talks, Pakistan Cancelled it, Says Rajnath Singh

File photo: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh.

New Delhi:  Home Minister Rajnath Singh today said the cancellation of the National Security Advisor level talks between India and Pakistan were “unfortunate”. India, he said, wanted it, but Pakistan had cancelled it.

“We will continue to try for coordial relations with Pakistan… it up to them to decide,” the minister said.

On Saturday night, Pakistan had announced that it could not meet the two terms India said were non-negotiable: That Kashmir will not be part of the agenda, and Pakistan’s NSA Sartaj Aziz would not meet Kashmiri separatists in Delhi.

India has throughout asserted that it will stick to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s commitment to his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif in Uffa — that the talks will be on terror.

The resolution had hardened following a couple of terror attacks in Jammu and Kashmir and the arrest of a Pakistani terorist in the run-up to the talks.



   



But the Pakistan government said the talks would not “serve any purpose”, if conducted on the basis of the two conditions laid down by India.

Calling the Pakistani decision “unfortunate,” a foreign ministry spokesperson said, “India did not set any preconditions… We only reiterated that Pakistan respect the spirit of the Simla & Ufa Agreements, to which it was already committed.”