India will try its best to save peace process: Khurshid

Thimpu, Jan 15: Notwithstanding Army Chief Gen Bikram Singh's tough talk on

on the recent ceasefire violations on the LoC, the government said on Monday it will try its best to ensure that the peace process was not derailed.

External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid, who is in Thimpu, Bhutan, on a two-day official visit, said the assessments of what has happened can only be received from the Army which is in control on the ground.

"So ultimately, we will have to go by their assessments. But the decision about how we proceed, at what pace, in what manner etc. is obviously a decision that is taken by the government," the minister told reporters here.

Khurshid added that the government was of the view that India had made an enormous investment into the peace process and would hence not want it get "derailed".

"When you make an enormous investment in the peace process, you don't do it just because it sounds good. You do it because there is objective and practical need for peace, because the cost of not having peace is much greater rather than the cost of investing in peace," he said.

He underlined, "Therefore, we are today still committed and trying the best that we can do to ensure that peace is not derailed, certainly not derailed beyond the extent to which we have seen it getting derailed."

His remarks came in response to questions regarding what the Army Chief had said earlier in the day.

Talking tough over the Jan 8 incident in Mendhar area of Jammu and Kashmir, Singh said, the beheading was "unacceptable" and "most unpardonable" and the troops would respond immediately, aggressively and offensively if provoked.

He said, India reserves the right to retaliate at the "time and place" of its choosing.

PTI