New Delhi, Oct 30: India today voiced disappointment that Pakistan has attached "impractical, extraneous and delaying" conditions to some of its 12-point peace initiative.
At the same time, it welcomed the fact that Pakistan has responded positively to some of its October 22 proposals.
Reacting to Pakistan's response to India's proposals, external affairs ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna said, "We are disappointed that Pakistan has, in effect, not agreed to our proposals for running extra buses on Delhi-Lahore route and establishing links between Mumbai and Karachi, Khokrapar and Munabao (Pakistan) and Srinagar and Muzaffarabad."
The spokesman said such links would have facilitated widening of people-to-people contact and cooperation. They could have easily been put into effect through technical level discussions.
Taking exception to Pakistan offering 100 scholarships to Kashmiri students, he said, "We believe that the process of building trust and cooperation between India and Pakistan, and establishing lasting peace, would be facilitated if offers are not targetted on any particular region of India."
"India has never adopted, for instance, a selective approach for Baluchistan, Sindh or NWFP, or for any particular community," he said.
He said India's offers have been available to any Pakistani. If Pakistan were to make such non-discriminatory and general offer of cooperation, then it would no doubt contribute to taking the process further, the spokesman said.
Observing that India's offer for a bus link between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad in PoK was motivated by humanitarian considerations, the spokesman said, "It is unfortunate that Pakistan instead opted to politicise and disrupt this by attaching conditions that they knew would not be acceptable."
"In fact, even now people from these regions travel without the requirement of the kind of documents that Pakistan spoke about," he said referring to Islamabad's proposal yesterday that those travelling should do so with UN documents and the checkposts on the LoC be manned by UN personnel.
Bureau Report
