Islamabad: Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has said the approach of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is “anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistan” and expressed hope that stalled bilateral talks between the two countries could resume after the general elections in India next year.
Imran said his government was keen to bring the perpetrators of the 2008 Mumbai attack to book, adding this was in the interest of Pakistan.
“India has elections coming up. The ruling party [of India] has an anti-Muslim, anti-Pakistan approach. They rebuffed all my overtures. Let’s hope that after the election is over, we can again resume talks with India,” Khan said in an interview with The Washington Post on Thursday.
India has told Pakistan that talks and terrorism cannot go together.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has ruled out the possibility of resumption of bilateral talks with Pakistan unless it “stops cross-border terror activities against India”.
The general elections are due to be held in India in April or May 2019.
Speaking about the Mumbai terror attack, Khan said Pakistan wants “something done about the bombers of Mumbai”.
“I have asked our government to find out the status of the case. Resolving that the case is in our interest because it was an act of terrorism,” he said.
On November 26, 2008, 10 Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists arrived by sea route and opened fire indiscriminately, killing 166 people.
Nine of the attackers were killed by police while lone survivor Ajmal Kasab was captured and hanged after being handed the death sentence by an Indian court.
Perpetrators of the 26/11 attack, including its mastermind and banned Jamat-ud Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed, continue to roam freely in Pakistan, indicating that Islamabad is not serious in bringing them to justice. The JuD is believed to be a front group for the LeT. The US has offered a $10 million bounty for Saeed.
Peace talks
After taking charge as prime minister in August this year, Imran said he was ready for peace talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Pakistan sent a proposal in September to hold foreign minister-level talks in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.
India accepted, and then rejected, the proposal, accusing Pakistan of glorifying terrorism and killing a security forces trooper in Jammu and Kashmir.
Both India and Pakistan gave the green signal to the much-awaited Kartarpur Corridor last month. The 4-kilometre-long corridor will connect Dera Baba Nanak in India’s Gurdaspur district with Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib Narowal in Pakistan.
The corridor will provide visa-free access to Indian Sikh pilgrims to the gurdwara which is located in Shakargarh in Narowal district of Pakistan’s Punjab province.
“I have opened a visa-free peace corridor with India called Kartarpur [so that Indian Sikhs can visit a holy shrine in Pakistan]. Let’s hope that after the election is over, we can again resume talks with India,” Imran said in the interview.
It is said that Guru Nanak Dev, the founder of Sikhism, had spent more than 18 years of his life there. The Kartarpur Sahib Gurdwara is located on the banks of the Ravi River, about three-four kilometres from the border in Pakistan.
