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| Wednesday, 19 May 2004 |
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Pakistan welcomes India pledge to resume key talks UNITED NATIONS, Tuesday (Reuters) Pakistan welcomed a pledge by India's prime minister-elect Sonia Gandhi to continue a peace process with Islamabad and said it was ready to resume talks with its neighbor soon. But Pakistani Foreign Minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri, visiting New York, said the process should not begin anew when Gandhi's government is sworn in on Wednesday. "So much hard work has already been done and I think the best thing is not to reinvent the wheel," Kasuri told reporters after chairing a U.N. Security Council meeting on peacekeeping. Pakistan holds the council's rotating presidency for May. "The fact that people on both sides want peace, wish peace, should help the two governments go forward with the process," Kasuri said. "I would like to assure the new government in India that we are determined to have peace with India." Both Gandhi and her Congress party were quick to state after their election victory last week that they would sustain the dialogue with Pakistan begun by India's outgoing Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. "And this shows how much importance she attaches to the continuing peace process in India," Kasuri said. Pakistan's Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali, speaking to reporters in Sindh province, said the future of the talks depended on the attitude of the new Indian government. "Our attitude was positive yesterday, it is positive today, and it will remain positive," Jamali said, stressing that there had to be a solution to the problem of Kashmir, the divided Himalayan territory at the heart of the rivalry. Khan said there was an imperative for nuclear-armed India and Pakistan to engage in dialogue, and Islamabad would stick to a comprehensive calendar of meetings agreed to by foreign secretaries from the two countries in February. He said Pakistan was preparing for the next scheduled meetings, to discuss confidence building measures concerning the countries' nuclear arsenals, in Delhi on May 25-26. Khan dismissed suggestions that India's Congress party was historically opposed to peace with Pakistan. "They have been saying that they pioneered the process, they take pride, they are taking pride in pioneering this process of dialogue with Pakistan, and we are paying attention to these positive vibes." Khan said the nuclear talks would cover strategic stability, nuclear stewardship, crisis management and risk reduction. Pakistani politicians privately regarded Vajpayee as one of the few Indian leaders they were comfortable talking to and Gandhi lacks the personal rapport Vajpayee established with President Pervez Musharraf at a meeting in January. But officials have been quick to state that the desire for a peace process, backed by the United States and other Western countries, is bigger than any single personality. |
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