Zeenews Bureau
New Delhi: Responding to a Pakistan Foreign Minister SM Qureshi’s broadside after talks with him on Friday, Indian External Affairs Minister SM Krishna said he had not visited Islamabad for sight seeing.
Krishna’s response was in reply to a question by a TV channel about what he had to say about Qureshi’s statement that he will not come to India for leisure trip. Krishna has invited the Pak FM for further talks here.
Krishna responded by saying even he did not go for sight seeing to Pak and was serious about the talks.
“India has always approaches bilateral talks with utmost seriousness,” he said in his first reaction to Qureshi’s rant that almost sunk the peace process.
On the latter’s charge that India was not prepared for talks, Krishna said one can’t exhaust all issues in only one meeting.
“Talks have to gradually move from one issue to the other,” he said.
Meanwhile, sources at the Centre revealed that the reason that India has not responded again to Qureshi’s jibes is that “we do not want to have a slanging match with them.”
Qureshi had said after the talks that India was not ready to discuss all issues and that Foreign Minister SM Krishna was constantly on phone during the talks, receiving “instructions from Delhi.” Krishna had rejected the charges on reaching India.
Also, sources in the Ministry of External Affairs say Krishna and Qureshi are unlikely to meet in
Kabul on sidelines of the International Conference on
Afghanistan. Krishna’s invitation to Qureshi for talks in India, meanwhile, still stands.
This was also confirmed by Krishna later.
Sources added that the future or roadmap of the talks will be decided “as we go along.”
On the other hand, Krishna and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may have a bilateral meeting in Kabul on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, according to sources, Qureshi has not called Krishna and apologised for his remarks following their talks on Thursday in Islamabad.
-PTI inputs
