Sending out the right signals on the eve of his meeting with US President Barack Obama,Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday said India was prepared to pick up the threads of the dialogue with Pakistan including discussing outstanding issues like Jammu and Kashmir. He,however,clarified that for this to materialise Pakistan had to abjure terrorism and come to the talks with good faith and sincerity. Addressing the prestigious Council for Foreign Relations,Singh said: My government has invested heavily over the past few years in normalising relations with Pakistan. We made considerable progress on the road to a durable and permanent settlement of all outstanding issues. I have said that we are ready to pick up the threads of the dialogue,including on issues related to Jammu & Kashmir. For this to happen,Pakistan must make a break with the past,abjure terrorism and come to the table with good faith and sincerity, he added. In a reference to the Mumbai attacks,the PM said the trauma continues to haunt us and underlined the need for avoiding a selective approach to deal with the menace. We should not harbour illusions that a selective approach to terrorism,tackling it in one place while ignoring it in others,would work. Interestingly,Singh seemed to be reaching out to those shaping Obama Administrations Af-Pak policy many of them have been underscoring the need for India to start dialogue with Pakistan as a way to assure Islamabad on its eastern flank. The same set of policy makers have been more empathetic to Pakistans concerns over Indian presence in Afghanistan,including allegations of Indian consulates involvement in anti-Pakistan activities. The Prime Minister sought to set the record clear on these doubts. India has civilizational links with Afghanistan. We do not see Afghanistan as a theatre of influence. Our interest is in building a region of peace and stability. India will continue to assist Afghanistan in building its institutions and its human resources. At the same time amid speculation about the US withdrawing in the long run from Afghanistan,Singh said democracy in Afghanistan would take time to settle and said he hoped regional and international players like the US would remain committed. On Indo-US ties,Singh made it clear that India was prepared to work with the US on disarmament issues including a verifiable Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty,on making Obama's Nuclear Security Summit a success and on developing green technologies by trying to fully harness the civil nuclear cooperation agreement.We are currently finalising details that will make the (civil nuclear) agreement fully operational. Once that is done,it will remove restrictions on the flow of technology in nuclear and many other areas, he said.
