Composite dialogue to resume after Sharief Govt settles down in Pak: Salman
5 Dariya News (Tariq Bhat)
Srinagar 28-Jun-2013
Minister for External Affairs, Salman Khurshid today said the composite dialogue with Pakistan will be resumed after the new government under Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief in the neighbouring country settles down. The External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid was talking to media persons after addressing Congress workers at the PCC office in Srinagar on Friday.“It is not good that we say everything right at the outset. The atmosphere is good at the moment. Let it improve further to be conducive for talks,” Salman said.“Let the new government in Pakistan settle down and understand its job, then we can resume it. However, there are some issues on which both the governments and people expect some progress, and we will get some satisfaction from it. Then things can move on smoothly from there,” he said.“Dialogue with Pakistanwas started already and had gone forward but due to some unfortunate incidents the dialogue received setback and under compulsion the process had to be stopped. Now after elections Nawaz Sharief government has given some indications of good relations and we have also responded to that. IT will take some time for him to establish and after that talks can go forward and we are hopeful that secular talks will be held. However, CBMs are important and need to be taken”, he said “Our formulation at the moment is to start a sectoral dialogue. The issues on which we can make forward movement, we will do that. There are some issues on which some quick progress is not possible,” he said.He said there are some confidence-building-measures which are to be implemented by both the countries to further improve the atmosphere.“There are confidence building measures like the most favoured nation status (to India) which they had decided earlier, but has not been implemented yet and the new visa regime which we have announced and will enable travel of more people across the border is to be implemented. We can move forward only one step at a time,” he said. I am ashamed if it happened in my country: Salman on Kunan-poshpora