Pakistan Doesn't Call Off Talks, Leaves it to India: Highlights

Islamabad: Pakistan's National Security Advisor Sartaj Aziz addressed a press conference in Islamabad on the scheduled talks between India and Pakistan. Mr Shah who is to arrive in New Delhi tomorrow, says that Pakistan is ready to meet India without any preconditions.

Here are the highlights from his speech.

• The main purpose of the meeting was to reduce tension on the Line of Control.
• More ironic is their alibi that Pakistan was trying to distort the agenda, nothing could be further from the truth.
• Pakistan was ready to hold NSA talks without any preconditions.
• It was India who set a precondition preventing us to meet the Hurriyat leaders.
• India seems reluctant to recognize the sign of the most important statement in the Ufa doc, "India and Pak have a collective responsibility... and discuss all issues".
• On my part, we are still ready to go to New Delhi to attend the NSA-level talks without any preconditions.
• Indian media was told that Pak was apprehensive of the dossiers prepared by Doval and Pak was looking for an exit.
• I have 3 dossiers on RAW promoting terrorism in Pakistan to be handed over to Mr Doval.
• So if I do not get this opportunity on August 24, I hope I will get the chance to hand them over to Mr Doval in New York.
• I urge Mr Modi to ponder over the most important part of the Ufa statement, that it is collective responsibility to promote development and think of all ways and means to initiate dialogue between the two countries.
• We never expected this meeting to lead to a breakthrough. The purpose was to reduce tension and to address each others' concerns.
• It was a minimum agenda, so right now the cancelation of the visit leads to escalation of tension, that is not desirable.
• First of all we are very disturbed with the arrest of Hurriyat leaders.
• Why are we sitting there, as far as we are concerned, the talks have not been formally canceled so we are going there. We are prepared to meet India.
• If you ask anybody sitting here what's the most important issue between the two countries, it's Kashmir, and Indian is trying to escape dialogue on that and misunderstand.
• Whenever we go to Dellhi we invite leaders from both sides, can't just invite ones ide.Sartaj Aziz: For the last 20 years, everytime our leaders went to India, they met Hurriyat leaders.
• We are giving moral and diplomatic support to Kashmiris.
• I have said earlier, we can't treat it as cancelation. We are ready to go without any condition. Too early to say if both PMs will meet. 70 ceasefire violations in the past one month, over 100 in the past two months.
• We have instructed our Army to shoot and only shoot in self-defence.
• Since Narendra Modi has come to power in India, if he wants to normalise relations with Pakistan, he wants to do it on his own terms. He wants to do it without taking about Kashmir which is not possible.