BJP President Gadkari deplores resumption of dialogue with Pakistan

New Delhi, Feb 27 (ANI): Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Nitin Gadkari has criticized the Centre for resuming dialogue with Pakistan.

Gadkari said, "Our country's government has tried to resume dialogue with Pakistan, which has begun a proxy war against us, which encourages cross-border terrorism, the country where nobody listens to the government, and the dialogue has completely failed."

Gadkari also slammed the Congress led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government's proposal to offer amnesty to Kashmiri youth, who had crossed over to the Pakistan administered Kashmir and are now willing to surrender and return home.

"The people who are behind killing many innocent people, the Congress is trying to welcome them from Pakistan administered Kashmir. There has not been any terror incident in America after September 11, and there have been such incidents in our country one after another," he added.

The first official talks between the two nations after the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks ended on Thursday with only an agreement to 'keep in touch', signalling that relations between the nuclear-armed rivals remain frosty.

Neither diplomat said if there would be a next round of talks, though the Prime Ministers of the two countries have an opportunity to meet at a regional summit in Bhutan in April.

The two countries did not appear to agree on which subjects should be covered in the talks; India wanted to focus on terrorism while Pakistan eyed the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir that has been the cause of two of their three wars.

Although India and Pakistan both said that the foreign secretary level talks is a "first step" towards the resumption of formal dialogues, certain differences could be sensed from the outcome of the discussions, which included serious issues like terrorism, Mumbai attacks, Kashmir and Balochistan.

After the discussions, Pakistan Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir described his meeting with his Indian counterpart Nirupama Rao, as a useful meeting and said it could be a good platform to restart broader bilateral discussions, but added that the two sides should not link individuals or incidents of terror to the talks. (ANI)