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India Says to Pursue Peace Process with Pakistan
New Delhi said on Monday that it would pursue the peace process with Pakistan with the ultimate aim of establishing peace and amicable relations with Islamabad.
During a 90-minute debate on Indo-Pakistan relations in Lok Sabha, the lower house of Indian parliament, External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh said "the caravan of peace is in motion. The dogs of war can not deviate this process."
Giving a detailed account of the summit between Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf in India's ancient city of Agra last month, the minister said New Delhi bluntly told Islamabad that Pakistan's proposition that Jammu and Kashmir be treated as a "territorial dispute" was " totally unacceptable" to India.
Singh told the members of the parliament that New Delhi made it clear during the meeting that Jammu and Kashmir was at the core of Indian nationhood, asserting that division on religious grounds as propounded by the two-nation theory was not acceptable to India.
The Indian official warned Pakistan against continuing with " compulsive and perpetual hostility" towards New Delhi.
Singh blamed Islamabad for what he said its encouragement to cross-border terrorism in Kashmir, saying that it would have grave consequences in Pakistan similar to the social and political anarchy that was being witnessed in Afghanistan.
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