NEW DELHI, 20 July 2006 — India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said the peace process with Pakistan had been hit but not halted by the deadly train bombings in Bombay, the media reported yesterday.
“I think the dialogue process has suffered but I won’t say it is a setback,” Manmohan told reporters on his way back from an international meeting in Russia.
“I think it is inevitable that in the light of this ghastly tragedy we need to reflect on our relations with Pakistan.”
New Delhi has not officially blamed Pakistan-based militants for the seven train bombings in Bombay last week in which 200 people were killed, but said the attackers received help from “across the border.” Although Pakistan denied the charge, India decided to postpone high-level talks with its neighbor scheduled to begin today to review a slow-moving peace process between the two countries.
Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf said on Tuesday it would be unfortunate if the peace process between the nuclear-armed rivals launched in January 2004 stalled.
“We must not allow such terrorist acts to undermine the historic opportunity for lasting peace between Pakistan and India,” the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan quoted him as saying.
Manmohan told reporters on his plane back from the G-8 meeting in Russia that he would like to see the process move forward.
“Anything that gives a setback to that process is not something that makes me happy,” he said. “I have said more than once that the destinies of the people of South Asia are closely interlinked,” he said. “Our countries need peace and stability to realize our developmental potential.” In an interview with the Hindu newspaper published yesterday, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri called on India to stop pointing fingers at Islamabad for every attack on its soil.
“If there’s a lead, Pakistan can help. But it has to be a definitive lead, not speculation of this kind within 30 seconds of the incident ... You have violence in India, in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal. Therefore, it could well be an Indian phenomenon, purely indigenous. It is unfair to link everything to Pakistan.” Islamabad, Kasuri added, was keeping a close watch on a number of hard-line groups but could not simply round up individuals without reason.
“Even in (the) United States and India where you have rule of law, and somebody is not committing a crime, do you simply prosecute on the basis that they are praying five times a day or they have a beard? I mean there has to be some crime committed by them.”
He added: “It does not help to simply start finger-pointing ... We should not provide space to people who are against the peace process. If we do they will expand that space for themselves to the detriment of the people of South Asia.”
