Indo-Pak dialogue just talks: Hina Rabbani Khar

Karachi: While describing the ongoing foreign-secretary level talks between India and Pakistan as "talks about talks," former foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar has asserted that the relations between the two neighbours are at their lowest right now.

"How do they get to talk, who gets what pretext," Khar said, adding that the current talks are held under the cover of " Saarc Yatra," which is "largely unhelpful" for the dialogue process, reported The Express Tribune.

She remarked that the two nations have not been able to even agree on what kind of dialogue they want to hold in the last 67 years.

Khar also hit out at Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government by saying that it has only "given in to the constituency of hate mongers" and they have encouraged an environment of hostility in the past one year. She added that the Modi government was "overly cautious" about India-Pakistan ties, to the extent of being scared.

"A government which is too scared to engage bilaterally does not realistically leave a lot of hope for relations to improve," Khar said.

Khar said that India cancelled the foreign secretary-level talks last year on a pretext that had "never been used before" and stressed that engaging with the Hurriyat leaders had always been Pakistan's official stance.

She said that Hurriyat leaders have to be a part of the dialogue process as Pakistan believed they were important stakeholders and added that the act of not recognizing them will not do any favour to the dialogue process.

The statement came as Indian Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar reached Islamabad on Tuesday morning and met his counterpart Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry to discuss issues related to the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation.