LONDON/ISTANBUL, 17 June 2004 — Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh yesterday vowed to pursue peace negotiations with Pakistan during a first visit to Britain since his Congress party took power last month.
“We are carrying forward the peace process,” Natwar told journalists at a joint press conference with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. Natwar is due to meet with his Pakistani counterpart Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri next week for the first time since India’s elections, on the sidelines of a regional conference in China.
Their meeting will coincide with talks on nuclear security in New Delhi between the nuclear-capable regional rivals and neighbors, who have fought three wars since their independence from Britain in 1947.
“I’m glad to say that the atmosphere in both countries is conducive to carrying the dialogue further,” Natwar said.
Straw said that during their 45-minute talks, he had made no request for India to provide troops or aid to the multinational force in Iraq. “I did not make any request at all about tangible support and certainly not any issue of troops, because we know and respect the position of the government of India, which is an all-party position,” Straw said.
The comments come days after Singh was forced to restate his government’s opposition to sending Indian troops, after initially suggesting it was too early to rule out helping the force once sovereignty was handed over to an interim Iraqi government on June 30.
Foreign secretaries of the nuclear-capable rivals will also meet in the Indian capital a week after the talks in China.
Pakistan, meanwhile, is confident of establishing good ties with India’s new Congress-led government and believes it is important to act quickly to resolve the Kashmir dispute, Kasuri said yesterday.
Relations between the two rivals thawed after former Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee relaunched a peace process last year. “I hope there will not be much momentum wasted,” Kasuri said in an interview, referring to the change of leadership in New Delhi after Vajpayee’s government was ousted in elections last month.
“We had developed a good degree of trust with the outgoing government... but I see no insurmountable difficulties in developing a similar level of trust with the new government.”
He said it was encouraging that the new administration had not pointed the finger at Pakistan over a spate of violence in Indian-controlled Kashmir last weekend, blamed on militants fighting New Delhi’s rule in the Himalayan region.
Kasuri, in Istanbul for a three-day meeting of the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), said both governments had now to take into account strong pro-peace constituencies at home as well as pressure from the international community to resolve their dispute, which he added was acting as a brake on South Asia’s development.
“But we must not let extremism rise. Extremism recognizes no international frontiers, it develops its own agenda,” Kasuri added, stressing the need for swift diplomatic progress.
The lack of stability in South Asia, due mainly to the Kashmir dispute, helped explain why India attracted only $3 billion in direct foreign investment and Pakistan less than $1 billion in 2003 compared with China’s $57 billion, Kasuri said.
“But what is clear is that the status quo in Kashmir is not acceptable, it is the cause of the perpetual tension,” he said, adding that any durable peace settlement must also respect the wishes of the Kashmiri people. “I am an optimist... This is do-able, and many Indians that I have spoken to also believe it is do-able.
