Islamabad, Pakistan Pakistan is prepared to sit down to talk to regional rival India, with whom it came close to full-blown military conflict last year, provided Kashmiris are given a seat at the table, Pakistan’s national security adviser said.
“I will tell you very honestly, in the last year, we have received messages about wanting to talk. [from India]”Moeed Yusuf told Indian journalist Karan Thapar during an extensive interview on Tuesday.
Yusuf advises Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan on national security and strategic policy.
“We have to think strategically. These are two countries, we have terrible relationships, we have to sit down as adults, ”he told Thapar. “Exist […] basically two issues: Kashmir and terrorism. I want to talk about both. “
Yusuf also accused India of sponsoring armed groups that carry out attacks on Pakistani soil.
He said Pakistan had specific evidence linking India’s intelligence services to the 2014 massacre of more than 130 students in Peshawar, a 2019 attack on a luxury hotel in southern Pakistan, a 2018 attack on a consulate. Chinese in Karachi and the recent merger of several Pakistani Taliban. factions in a single group.
The interview, sometimes conducted in a combative tone, was the first time a senior Pakistani official spoke to the Indian media since August 2019, when India revoked a special status for the part of the disputed territory of Kashmir that it administers.
The Pakistani NSA said it was necessary that the Kashmir dispute and issues related to “terrorism” be on the agenda of future talks.
A man is detained by Indian police officers during a protest near the site of a shooting between security forces and suspected rebels in Srinagar, Indian Administered Kashmir [File: Danish Ismail/Reuters]
“There are three parties to the Kashmir dispute. There is Pakistan, there is India and there is the main party, the humans called Kashmiris, ”Yusuf said.
“If Kashmiris cannot bear the sight of India, they cannot bear to be in the same room as Indians, how are we going to have a dialogue?”
Yusuf did not specify which group or individuals he was referring to specifically when he asked that “Kashmiris” be part of the talks.
Pakistan and India have fought two of their three wars over the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir, which they both claim in full, but administer separate portions divided by a Line of Control.
Last year, the two countries came close to another war, after Indian airstrikes on Pakistani soil sparked air skirmishes that saw Pakistan launch retaliatory strikes and shoot down an Indian plane.
India’s action was sparked by the death of more than 40 security personnel in a suicide attack in the city of Pulwama in Indian-administered Kashmir, an attack that India attributed to Pakistan-based armed groups.
Pakistan denies allowing armed groups to use its territory to act against other countries, specifically India.
‘Fiction’ and ‘impossible dream’: India
In his interview, Yusuf also claimed that India had sent a “message of desire to talk” with Pakistan, without giving further details.
But why is there a wish? In my reading, to speak, to get somewhere, “he said. “There has to be an environment conducive to speaking.”
Relations between the two South Asian nuclear powers have remained frozen since India changed the constitutional status of Indian-administered Kashmir, absorbing Muslim-majority territory into the country’s administrative and political mainstream, a move criticized by Pakistan.
The government of India did not offer official comment on the interview.
However, in a report on Wednesday, India’s Hindustan Times newspaper quoted a senior Indian official as saying that Yusuf’s claims were “fiction” and not only “mischievous but also a pipe dream.”
“The officials added that New Delhi’s position on holding any talks with Pakistan had been consistent and was previously conditional on Islamabad taking concrete steps to create an atmosphere free from the shadow of terror and violence,” the report said, who did not reveal the identity of the officer.
India’s intelligence agency targeted
Pakistan has routinely accused India of being associated with attacks on Pakistani soil, particularly in the southwestern province of Baluchistan.
On Tuesday, however, Yusuf made specific accusations against India’s intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW or R&AW).
“[In] In 2019, funds from the Indian embassy were used, more than one million US dollars, to effect the merger. [of Pakistan Taliban]”He said.” Congratulations to RAW, they have managed to create an organization to kill Pakistanis. “
Yusuf accused RAW of being in contact with Malik Faridoon, a man he identified as the “mastermind” of the 2014 attack on a school in the city of Peshawar, in northwestern Pakistan, which killed 132 children, one of them. the deadliest attacks ever committed on the country’s territory.
Students hold up photographs of their schoolmates who were killed in a 2014 attack by Pakistani Taliban gunmen on the Army Public School during a protest in Peshawar [File: Fayaz Aziz/Reuters]
“We have records of eight phone calls, we have records of phone numbers, we have records of handlers who organized all of this from a third country,” he said.
It also linked RAW to the attack on the Chinese consulate in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi in 2018, and to an attack on a luxury hotel in the southern port city of Gwadar last year. that killed five people. India denies the accusations.
Responding to Indian accusations that Pakistan had delayed trials of Pakistanis accused of participating in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, which killed more than 160 people, Yusuf said the law was running its course.
“We have to follow the course of the law, and India is not cooperating on the evidence that it needs to provide,” Yusuf said. “Get the witnesses through, provide the evidence, I want to get this over with before anyone else.”
He made similar allegations about the slow progress on the appeal of Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav, who was convicted of espionage and sentenced to death by a Pakistani court in 2017.
Yusuf also responded to a question about Pakistan’s silence on the issue of the alleged persecution of Uighur Muslims in China, a strategic ally and neighbor of northeast Pakistan, calling the allegations “a minor problem.”
“Even our delegations have visited, we have seen and we are 100 percent satisfied that it is not a problem,” he said. “The West can say what it wants […] we have zero worries. “
Al Jazeera’s Asad Hashim contributed to this report from Islamabad.
