PM Modi to decide if Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will visit Pakistan for SAARC meet: sources
As relations between India and Pakistan plummet, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is unlikely to attend a regional summit in Islamabad next week, said government sources.
A final decision will be taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but India is unhappy with the way Islamabad treated union Home Minister Rajnath Singh when he visited the Pakistani capital for a SAARC conference earlier this month.
Finance Ministers of SAARC - which has eight South Asian countries as members - are to meet on the 25th and 26th in Pakistan, which said in a recent statement that it would play "a good host".
That assurance was made days after Mr Singh spent a tense 24 hours in Islamabad. He was snubbed by his counterpart Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan and during the visit, Pakistani premier Nawaz Sharif publicly spoke of "the freedom movement" in Kashmir in remarks designed to provoke India.
Yesterday, the PM's Independence Day speech delivered an aggressive change of tone in his policy on Pakistan. The PM said the people of Balochistan and Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir have thanked him for raising the issues of atrocities committed by Pakistan's security forces in both regions, a strong rebuttal to Pakistan accusing India of human rights violations in recent weeks in Kashmir.
Hostility across the border ratcheted up after the July 8 killing by India's security forces of Kashmiri terrorist Burhan Wani, who was 22. Wani was eulogized by Pakistan and Mr Sharif as a martyr.
His death has plunged the Kashmir Valley into its worst unrest in over six years, with huge mobs of protestors targeting security forces and their bases. Nearly 60 people have died and 5,000 have been injured. India has accused Pakistan of instigating the violence and warned that "Pakistan's dream of getting Kashmir will not be realized till the end of eternity."
The PM has been invited to Pakistan in November for a SAARC summit of heads of state.