Washington, Sept 28: Five days after a bitter attack on Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's speech raking up the Kashmir issue, the Indian Embassy today clarified that it would be better idea if Pakistan observed some "fasting" before making pronouncements on Kashmir at the United Nations. Issuing a "clarification" of what Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal told reporters in New York on September 23 following Musharraf's comments on Kashmir at a conference on terrorism here, the Indian Embassy said "in fact what he (Sibal) said was 'before the (annual) UN pilgrimage, it would be a good idea for the Pakistani leadership to do some fasting when it comes to pronouncements on Kashmir.”
The Foreign Secretary, has "also clarified the context, which was that these Pakistani statements on Jammu and Kashmir were against the spirit of the initiatives taken by the Prime Minister and clouded the atmosphere for improvement of bilateral relations."
"All of us were present at this briefing and we were in no doubt about his using the allusion of fasting specifically in the sense of abstention on J&K pronouncements," the Indian Embassy here said.
The reason for the clarification, it said, was that some have given a religious connotation to what the Foreign Secretary had said because he used the word "fasting”. Bureau Report