Pakistan said that its doors for dialogue with India remain open but the constructive environment required for talks is lacking. At its weekly press conference, Pakistan’s Foreign Office also rejected the recently released report of India on its delimitation exercise in Jammu and Kashmir.

“In diplomacy, you never shut doors,” Asim Iftikhar, spokesperson of the Foreign Office, said, adding that doors for diplomacy on outstanding disputes with India remained open. “The environment for a fruitful, constructive dialogue is not there”.

The remark came on Thursday in response to the new government’s approach to resolving outstanding disputes with India. Iftikhar also said that there was a national consensus on this issue and successive governments had pursued the same policy of seeking peaceful settlement of disputes with India.

Last month, India's Minister of State for External Affairs V T Muraleedharan said in the upper house of Parliament, “The Government’s consistent position has been that India desires normal neighborly relations with Pakistan and is committed to addressing issues, if any, bilaterally and peacefully in an atmosphere free of terror, hostility, and violence. The onus is on Pakistan to create such a conducive atmosphere.”

Earlier this week, Islamabad had cleared the appointment of a trade minister at its High Commission in New Delhi but stressed that there was no change in its trade policy with India. The appointment had raised the hope for the revival of trade ties which remains stalled since August 2019 when Pakistan suspended ties after New Delhi ended the special status of Jammu and Kashmir.

(SAM)