Pakistan’s top diplomat to visit India for conference

Islamabad / AFP

Pakistan’s top foreign affairs official has said he plans to visit India next month for a regional conference, the first high-profile visit since tensions spiralled between the arch-rivals after a deadly attack on an Indian army base.
Sartaj Aziz, adviser to Pakistan’s prime minister Nawaz Sharif and de facto foreign minister, said he will attend the Heart of Asia conference on Afghanistan, to be hosted by India in December, “to defuse the tension”.
“We want to prove that Pakistan is with the multilateral process by attending the Heart of Asia Conference as Afghanistan is our top priority,” he told reporters in Islamabad on Tuesday. It was not immediately clear if he would hold any bilateral talks with Indian officials during the visit.
The decision came after months of surging tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours sparked by a September attack on an Indian base in disputed Kashmir, which killed 19 soldiers and which New Delhi blames on Pakistan-based militants.
Tensions reached dangerous levels as India said it had retaliated to the raid by carrying out “surgical strikes” across the heavily militarised border, sparking a furious reaction from Islamabad, which denied the strikes took place. There have since been repeated outbreaks of cross-border firing, with both sides reporting deaths and injuries including of civilians.
India also sought to isolate Pakistan in the wake of the militant raid, pulling out of a key South Asian summit set to be held in Islamabad in November in a major snub.
Other countries scheduled to attend the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit followed suit, eventually forcing Islamabad to cancel it entirely.
In his comments Tuesday, televised by Pakistan’s biggest private TV channel GEO, Aziz condemned India for that decision.