No cricket with Pakistan, says India
Mr Jaishankar said the issue for Ind was not whether it talks to Pak, but how it can talk to a country that is conducting terrorism.
New Delhi: Minister for external affairs Subhramanyam Jaishankar ruled out the possibility of India playing cricket with Pakistan. While referring to Islamabad’s support to terrorism, Mr Jaishankar said that New Delhi can’t take a “tea break” and say “let us go and play cricket” with Pakistan.
Speaking in New York on Thursday, Mr Jaishan-kar said that the “dominating narrative of the relationship” between New Delhi and Islamabad “is of terrorism, suicide bombings, violence and then you say, ‘okay guys tea break, let us go and play cricket’.”
He highlighted the recent terror attacks in India at Uri, Pathankot, and Pulwama and said that “it’s a very hard narrative to sell to people... It’s a democracy, sentiments do matter and one message [that] I don’t want to give [is that] you do terrorism by night, and [then] it’s business as usual during the day.”
Mr Jaishankar said the issue for India was not whether it talks to Pakistan, but how it can talk to a country that is conducting terrorism. “Of course everyone wants to talk to their neighbour. The issue is, how do I talk to a country that is conducting terrorism and which frankly I would say follows a policy of implausible deniability,” he said.
“They do it, they kind of pretend they don’t do it. They know that that pretense is not serious, but yet they do it. So, how do you address that and I think it’s a huge challenge for us,” he added.
The external affairs minister stressed the history of India and Pakistan was not a normal history.
Mr Jaishankar said that despite being a neighbour, Pakistan will not trade with India, is a member of the WTO but will not extend MFN status, even though they are legally obliged to and New Delhi did it.
“You have a neighbour who would not allow you connectivity. So we have, for example, the potential to use Pakistan to transit on to Afghanistan, Iran but they will not allow you that connectivity,” he said. Such an attitude has slowed down regionalism, largely because of a concern that that might integrate them more with India's economy, he said. “So it’s a very challenging neighbour.”