India calls off foreign secretary level talks with Pakistan

            

India has called off the foreign secretary level talks with Pakistan that was scheduled to take place in Islamabad on August 25. 

The cancellation of talks comes in the wake of Pakistan High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit’s invitation to Kashmiri separatists for holding talks just ahead of the proposed secretary level talks.

In fact, Abdul Basit had today met Shabir Shah, one of the Kashmiri separatist leaders.

Foreign Secretary Sujata Singh informed  Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit  today that her talks with Pakistan counterpart on August 25 in Islamabad stands cancelled.

Pakistan's interference in India's internal affairs "not acceptable", Foreign Secretary Sujata Singh  told Pakistan High Commissioner here.

Ministry of External Affairs has made it clear that Pakistan High Commissioner's meeting with "so-called" separatist leaders undermines constructive diplomatic engagement initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Modi was under tremendous pressure to cancel these talks. The opposition Congress had wondered how these talks could go on in the wake of Abdul Basit inviting separatist leaders for talks just before secretary level talks.

Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit had invited separatist leaders from Kashmir “for consultations” at Delhi ahead of the Foreign Secretary level talks between the two countries on August 25 in Islamabad, 

The chairman of the hardline faction of the Hurriyat, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, and senior separatist leader Shabir Ahmad Shah, who floated the third faction of the amalgam last year, had also been invited by the Pakistan High Commissioner.

However, pro-independence JKLF chairman Mohammad Yasin Malik has not been invited. “We have not received any communication from the Pakistan High Commission,” a spokesman of the JKLF had said.

Pakistan envoys have in the past too talked to separatists from Kashmir before any major diplomatic initiative with India. However, Islamabad broke off from this tradition when Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif visited India to attend the swearing in ceremony of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in May this year.