NEW DELHI, 11 June 2004 — India’s new foreign minister has said nuclear security must be the top priority during talks with Pakistan, although their dispute about Kashmir would also be on the agenda.
Natwar Singh told the BBC that New Delhi wanted to make “a new beginning” with Pakistan but appeared to want to deflect Islamabad’s insistence that Kashmir should be the core issue under discussion, in order to resolve decades of hostility.
“To me personally, the most important thing on our agenda should be nuclear dimension because when we remitted office in 1996 we were not a nuclear power,” the BBC quoted Singh as saying in its Hardtalk India program due to be telecast on Friday.
The foreign secretaries of the two countries are due to meet on June 27-28 to discuss nuclear confidence building measures and Kashmir as part of a peace process that began last year.
The two sides are expected to hold talks on other issues later in July including measures to boost trade, define their maritime boundary and resolve a military stand-off on the high altitude Siachen glacier.
Natwar Singh said Kashmir was one of the issues on the table, reflecting a long-held Indian position that a full spectrum of relations between the neighbors must not be held hostage to the dispute over the Himalayan region.
But he appealed to Pakistan not to hold the peace process hostage to a resolution of the Kashmir dispute.
“Well, I would only say that we will appeal and request them that this road we have traveled over 57 years hasn’t produced the results that you want, the results that we want. Let’s make a new beginning,” Natwar Singh, a former envoy to Islamabad, said.
There was no immediate reaction from Pakistan, but President Pervez Musharraf has repeatedly warned India not to sideline the Kashmir dispute and expect ties to improve without progress on resolving it.
— Additional input from Reuters
