Tuesday, Jun 10, 2003
Tuesday, Jun 10, 2003 |
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By B. Muralidhar Reddy
The newly-appointed Foreign Office spokesman, Masood Khan, surprised journalists with his comments on the Indo-Pak. peace moves. The High Commissioner-designate to India and outgoing spokesman, Aziz Ahmed Khan, who sat through the news conference, did not intervene. Would the new spokesman have ventured into such a sensitive territory as Indo-Pak ties without clearance from the highest quarters? He was, of course, answering specific questions on the pace of the peace initiative and whether Islamabad was satisfied with it. The burden of Mr. Masood Khan's argument was that Pakistan had not seen the kind of progress it would have liked in the normalisation process; it had also reasons to be concerned over the ``conflicting'' statements emanating from Indian leaders. ``The Pakistani leadership has been very constructive, forward-looking and positive in its approach towards the resumption of a dialogue. Unfortunately, we haven't seen the same sort of tone from the Indian leadership,'' he said. ``The Indian leadership should put its act together and speak in one voice. We hear about internal dissension about the normalisation of relations with Pakistan and that is worrying.'' Mr. Khan said: ``We should not try to introduce conditions before the talks and that is the spirit (with which) we should work.'' Without referring to any specific statement, Mr. Khan said, ``they do not seem to be helping this process (of talks) a lot''. He expressed the hope that India would help Pakistan keep the momentum of the engagements which were at an ``embryonic'' stage. ``We hope that the engagements between Pakistan and India would be more intense, purpose-oriented and in a time-frame.'' Replying to a question, the spokesman said Pakistan had been calling for a nuclear weapon-free South Asia, but things changed after the nuclear testing by India in 1998. However, he said, there had been no change in its policy that called for a strategic balance between the two nuclear-states. ``In realm of nuclear and missile capabilities, there is a parity of sort, but there is a conventional (weapons) imbalance.'' On the restoration of air, bus and rail links between the two countries, he said a lot of conditions were being put forth by India. But Pakistan wanted to resume talks quickly without any conditions. For the restoration of air links, the aviation authorities of the countries would hold consultations to sort out technical details, he said. On the Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf's visit to the U.S., U.K., France and Germany, he said the people have good expectations, as Pakistan had been a close ally of these countries in the war against terrorism. The objective of the visit was to consolidate ties that were multi-dimensional. The Russian Foreign Minister would be visiting Pakistan from June 15 and the two sides would discuss bilateral and regional issues, Central Asian states, the situation in South Asia and issue of non-proliferation. Mr. Khan said the Afghan Ambassador had been called to the foreign office today and an official protest was launched over the recent incident in Spin Boldak near the Pakistan-Afghan border.
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