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Pakistan-India ties not improving anytime soon: Aziz

Pakistan-India ties not improving anytime soon: Aziz

Islamabad, Jun 28 (UNI) Adviser to Pakistan Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz has said he is not very hopeful about normalisation of ties with India claiming that New Delhi wanted it on its own terms, which was not acceptable to Islamabad. Speaking about ties with India at a foreign policy briefing session held for journalists here yesterday, Mr Aziz said India wanted normalisation on its terms, which was not acceptable to Pakistan. Mr Aziz said Pakistan wanted to have peaceful relations with India but it would not back down from its principled stance over Kashmir. He sounded sceptical about any progress towards normalisation in the near future and instead called for managing the situation so that tensions would not grow, Pakistan daily Dawn said. 'Their narrative has remained unchanged. They do not want to give us credit [for our actions against terrorism] and keep an excuse for not starting dialogue,' he said. Pakistan has been insisting dialogues on all issues, whereas India wants an exclusive focus on terrorism. 'If no major improvement takes place, we should manage the situation and our minimum objective should be to prevent tensions from growing,' he suggested. On Pakistan -Afghanistan relations, he said,'Prospects of the [Afghan] peace process are not good. It would all now depend on the ground situation in Afghanistan. The peace process was sabotaged following elimination of Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour in a drone attack last month, he said. Mr Aziz said Pakistan has already reviewed its policy on Afghanistan under which it had been decided to expand relations with Kabul in all spheres and be more mindful about its concerns. He made it clear it was not in the hands of Pakistan to bring all Afghan Taliban groups to the negotiating table. 'Border management is an immediate need … that is our priority. Moreover, border is not an issue for us, which we would like to negotiate,' he emphasised. On Pakistan-US relations, he said relationship was moving in the right direction despite recent setbacks, which led to cancellation of an F-16 deal. He said that working groups of the bilateral ‘strategic dialogue’ would be meeting shortly. Earlier, the US government had concerns about the nuclear programme, but after realising that Pakistan would not budge on that, it started agitating the Haqqani network issue, he said. “Even there we do not have any difference of objective, we only hold divergent views on timing and sequencing of how we proceed,” he added. UNI XC SV 1050

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