- Friday, October 18, 2024
Jaishankar’s visit comes nearly a decade since an Indian foreign minister has visited Islamabad amid frosty relations between the two nuclear powers
By: shajil kumar
THE VISIT of India’s foreign minister to Pakistan earlier this week was a “good beginning” that could lead to a thaw in relations between the two rivals, former Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif was quoted as saying by Indian media on Friday.
Indian foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar was in Pakistan on Tuesday and Wednesday for a meeting of governments of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, with the capital city under tight lockdown.
“This is how talks move forward. Talks should not stop,” Sharif, the president of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N), and the brother of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, told a group of visiting Indian journalists, the Indian Express newspaper reported.
Sharif also recalled prime minister Narendra Modi’s surprise stopover in Lahore on December 25, 2015, on his way back from Kabul.
“It was very kind of Modi-ji to visit Pakistan. He came and met my mother. These are not small gestures, they mean something to us, especially in our countries. We should not overlook them,” he said.
Jaishankar was among nearly a dozen leaders participating in the gathering in Islamabad, nearly a decade since an Indian foreign minister has visited amid frosty relations between the two nuclear powers.
Jaishankar and his counterpart Ishaq Dar had an “informal interaction”, an official in Pakistani foreign ministry said on Thursday, but New Delhi denied that any sort of meeting had taken place.
“We had made it very clear that this particular visit is for SCO head of government meeting. Other than that, there were some pleasantries exchanged on the sidelines of the meeting,” Indian foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said on Thursday.
However, some senior functionaries in the Pakistani establishment are projecting the Indian minister’s visit as an “ice-breaker”.
“We have lost the last 75 years and it is important we don’t lose the next 75 years,” Sharif was quoted as saying in the Times of India newspaper.
The former prime minister also pitched for the resumption of cricketing ties between India and Pakistan and even said that he would like to travel to India if the two teams play in the final of any major tournament in the neighbouring country.
Following a series of terror attacks on India by Pakistan-based terror groups in 2016, New Delhi decided not to hold any bilateral dialogue with Islamabad saying talks and terror can’t go hand-in-hand. (Agencies)
