New Delhi: Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar welcomed the bilateral talks held between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif, but also stressed the importance of having a diplomatic platform on which matters are 'hammered out'.
"I am glad that the Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan are meeting in Russia and I welcome it. Nevertheless, it is important to stress that the Prime Ministers meeting alone is not sufficient. It is important to have a diplomatic platform, on which matters are hammered out, possibly through long negotiations, and unless and until the dialogue between India and Pakistan is put back on track in Ufa, I think this will be a transient phenomenon," Aiyar told ANI.
"What is important to understand is that it was we who broke the process of dialogue by introducing a new red line when we said in August last year that Pakistan cannot talk to the Hurriyat. We can either withdraw the new conditionality that we imposed or for the Pakistani Prime Minister to say that he accepts the new red line," he added.
The bilateral talks between Prime Minister Modi and his Prime Minister Sharif are currently underway in Ufa, Russia, on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).
