External Affairs Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar on Tuesday said India has made Pakistan’s policy of using “cross-border terrorism to bring India to the table” irrelevant by “not playing that game”.
“What Pakistan was trying to do, not now but over multiple decades, was really to use cross-border terrorism to bring India to the table. That, in essence, was its core policy. We have made that irrelevant by not playing that game now,” Jaishankar told ANI in an interview.
“It’s not a case that we won’t deal with a neighbour. After all, at the end of the day, a neighbour is a neighbour, but it is that we will not deal on the basis of terms that they set where the practice of terrorism is deemed as legitimate and effective in order to bring you to the table,” he added.
During the interview, the EAM also talked about India’s approach to counter China’s “aggressive measures”. Responding to a question about whether India lost to China’s “mind games”, he said, “I don’t think we always lost out, but at various points of time, when we talk about the parts of the past today would be very difficult to understand, Panchsheel agreement is another such example. The role of confidence and assurance, the fact that we are a multiple millennia civilisation. All of this should be in our demeanour, in our standing and in the way we approach other countries.”
Last year in September, S Jaishankar, while speaking at the General Debate of the 78th session of UNGA in New York, targeted China and its all-weather ally Pakistan saying respect for territorial integrity and non-interference in internal affairs cannot be exercises in “cherry-picking”.
“Nor must be countenance that political convenience determines responses to terrorism, extremism and violence. Similarly, respect for territorial integrity and non-interference in internal affairs cannot be exercised in cherry-picking when reality departs from rhetoric, we must have the courage to call it out,” he said.
(With ANI inputs)
Comments
0 comment