Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Indian High Commissioner Gautam Bambawale called on Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry here on Friday.

At the meeting, Chaudhry handed over Bambawale a letter containing Pakistan’s reply to Indian Foreign Secretary Subrahmanyam Jaishankar’s letter. Jaishankar said this week that India was ready to resume secretary-level talks with Pakistan on certain conditions. Pakistan has invited India to talks focusing exclusively on Kashmir, sources told Daily Times.

As New Delhi conveyed its conditions for talks with Pakistan on Wednesday, the Foreign Office consulted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on this issue and then replied to India.

The Foreign Office said in a statement that Pakistan had invited the Indian foreign secretary to visit Islamabad by the end of this month for talks on Kashmir with a view to find a fair and just solution to the dispute as per UN resolutions and aspirations of the people of Jammu and Kashmir.

The Foreign Office said that Pakistan called for an immediate end to human rights violations in Indian-occupied Kashmir where people were struggling for their right to self-determination. It said that Pakistan had called for provision of medical facilities to the Kashmiris who were injured at the hands of the Indian security forces during recent violent protests. Pakistan has also urged India to allow doctors and paramedics to travel to the disputed region.

The Foreign Office said that Pakistan condemned Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement about Balochistan and Gigit-Baltistan and described it as a violation of the UN charter. It said that Modi’s statement was an attempt to divert world’s attention from Indian atrocities against the innocent people of occupied Kashmir. “The prime minister is going to take up this issue very seriously at the UN platform,” Foreign Office spokesman Nafees Zakaria said at a weekly press briefing at his office.

India accepted Pakistan’s dialogue offer on Wednesday on the condition that cross-border terrorism and infiltration would also be discussed during the bilateral talks. Bambawale called on Chaudhry and handed him over the reply from Jaishankar.

On August 15, Chaudhry called on the Indian high commissioner and gave him an invitation letter, formally inviting his Indian counterpart to secretary-level talks on Indian-occupied Kashmir. Pakistan invited India to talks hours after Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in his speech on India’s Independence Day that Pakistan was committing rights violations in Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Kashmir. Pakistan this time dedicated its Independence Day on August 14 to the freedom of Kashmir.

Last week, Adviser to Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz said during a briefing to the media that Pakistan wanted to invite India to secretary-level talks on Kashmir. Responding to Aziz’s remarks, Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said that Pakistan must address “incitement to violence and terrorism across the border and parading of internationally recognised terrorists like Hafiz Saeed and Syed Salahuddin and sincerely follow-up on Mumbai attack trial and Pathankot attack investigation” before dialogue with India.