AGENCY
New Delhi: India on Wednesday indicated that action against terror by Pakistan will take priority over talks with it in the aftermath of the Pathankot strike that had prompted the postponement of the Foreign Secretary-level talks.
“In the aftermath of a terror attack, if you ask me what do you give priority to, a terrorist attack or a diplomatic dialogue, I think the answer should be obvious,” Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar said.
He was replying to a question during an interactive session at the Raisina Dialogue — a conclave on geo-economics and geo-politics — on whether FS talks between the two countries were linked to action by Pakistan on information given to it by India on Pathankot terror attack.
Jaishankar said both the countries were in touch with each other following the Pathankot attack, primarily at the level of National Security Advisers and to a certain extent between him and his Pakistani counterpart. The Foreign Secretary said “parallel processes” are at works.
India had blamed terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed for the Pathankot attack and sought action against the perpetrators of the strike which had led to the postponement of Indo-Pak Foreign Secretary-level talks. India had said Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar masterminded the attack.
Talking about overall Indo-Pak ties, he said India was for a “much more modern relationship” with Islamabad but for that to happen there was a need to have change in attitude towards a number of issues of which terrorism is a “central” one.
Underlining the need for better connectivity between India and Pakistan, he said, “It takes two hands to clap” and that India would like to have same kind of ties with Islamabad like with other neighbours.
“Most people in this country want to treat Pakistan as a normal neighbour. So we would like to do with Pakistan what we do with everybody else. But the fact is that there are obstacles and we know what the obstacles are,” he said, emphasising on the need to remove the obstacles.
Earlier, to a question whether India and Pakistan can remain isolated, Jaishankar said they shouldn’t and that New Delhi has been making sincere efforts to improve ties with Pakistan.
“I cannot think of any Prime Minister of India who did not strive for better relations with Pakistan. There may be differences in nuances, pace and packaging,” he said.
Last month, Pakistan had lodged an FIR into the Pathankot terror attack case which was seen by India as a “step forward” in bringing the perpetrators of the strike to justice.
The FIR was filed against “unknown persons” though India had named Masood Azhar as mastermind of the strike.
India submitted evidence to show that the six men who opened fire at the air base came from across the border, and demanded action against the terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed led by Azhar.
Yesterday, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s Foreign Affairs Advisor Sartaj Aziz said the SIT may visit India in the next few days and hoped that the Foreign Secretary-level talks will be scheduled very soon.
Pakistan last week set up a five-member Joint Investigation Team (JIT) to probe the terror attack.
Earlier, a six-member SIT was set up by the government for the initial probe into the 2nd January attack based on the leads given by India.
In Washington, Sartaj Aziz, the Foreign Policy Advisor to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said Pakistan is “anxiously waiting” for the “disrupted” Indo-Pak Foreign Secretary-level talks to resume, a top aide of Pakistani Prime Minister has said while appealing to India not to give non-state actors “a veto” over bilateral ties.
“Once we begin the dialogue, I am sure we would be able to deal with some issues even if we are not able to solve all the issues at dispute. Our main purpose is that Line of Control should be peaceful, normal relationship should start, sporting links should resume so that tension decreases. That prepares the ground for dealing with more difficult issues,” Aziz said.
“Terrorism is a common threat. In India they have one or two incident a year. We have an incident every week.
Therefore, we have suffered much more from terrorism that anybody else. We have told them that in our relationship they have been interfering not through non-state actors but through state actors. So therefore, let’s improve our relationship,” he said.
Pathankot attack: NIA seeks details from Pak
New Delhi: NIA, which is probing the terror strike on Pathankot IAF Air Base in January, has sent Letters Rogatory to Pakistan seeking details of four Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terrorists who had carried out the attack.
Ahead of the visit of Pakistani Special Investigating Team (SIT), likely to take place in the last week of this month, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) sent the Letters Rogatory, a legal document sent through the Special Court asking details about the phone numbers dialled by the four terrorists ahead of carrying out the strike at the airbase of Indian Air Force on the intervening night of 1st and 2nd January.
In a related development, it appears that no terrorists were present at the airmen billet. The elite National Security Guards had spent 48 hours clearing the area.
While NIA is officially tight-lipped on the issue and say that it was awaiting forensic report from CFSL Chandigarh, sources privy to the development said that no human remains or ammunition have been found from the airmen billet which has been extensively searched by sleuths of NIA and central intelligence agencies.
The initial input about the terrorists was four only which had been shared with NSG and army units. However, even the Intelligence Bureau was in for a shock when NSG, which was rattled by the death of its officer Lt Col Niranjan EK, claimed that there was gunfire from the billet and took another two days to clear it, the sources said.
In the meantime, the NIA, in its Letters Rogatory, have sought details about telephone numbers dialled by the terrorists before launching an attack on the IAF base.
The numbers are believed to be in the names of people connected with Jaish terror group including Mullah Dadullah and Kashif Jaan. The numbers shared belong the Pakistani telecom operators like Mobilink, Warid and Telenor.
The NIA has also sought details and picture of sons of Khayam Baber, whose son had was part of the suicide squad that carried out the attack.
Kashif Jaan, one of the key handlers of the attackers, had accompanied the terrorists till the border and returned to supervise the operations, the sources said.
The bodies of four terrorists have been preserved. Out of the four, two of them have been identified as Nasir and Salim.
Nasir was the one who had called his mother, Baber, in Bhawalpur from the phone snatched from jeweller friend of Superintendent of Police of Punjab Salwinder Singh.
The NIA has also given details including the batch number of food packets used by the terrorists after infiltrating into India on 30th December. The terrorists had carefully buried the packets which had Pakistani markings and manufacturing dates of November and December 2015.
