Delhi uncertain on fate of high level talks with Pakistan

(MENAFN- Arab News) NEW DELHI: Indian officials said on Sunday that two planned meetings with Pakistani counterparts are now uncertain after talks between their national security advisers were cancelled amid a row over disputed Kashmir.

The collapse of peace talks hours before they were to start on Sunday has raised questions about the arch-rivals' willingness to overcome mutual mistrust built since their separation almost seven decades ago.
Pakistan said late Saturday it could not accept India's 'preconditions' for the talks which had been scheduled for Sunday in New Delhi effectively cancelling them.
Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj said Saturday that apart from Sunday's meeting two other high-level meetings of officials had been planned to discus border and cease-fire violations. Cross-border shelling in Kashmir this month has caused several civilian deaths on both sides.
The minister said the meetings plan had been agreed by India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Pakistan's Nawaz Sharif when they met in the Russian city of Ufa last month.
'We have already described the cancellation of NSAs (national security advi sers) meet by Pakistan as unfortunate' a senior Foreign Ministry official told AFP on Sunday referring to an earlier Tweet by the ministry.
'Now the fate of those other two meetings is also not clear... it will take a few days for some more clarity.'
Swaraj had given Islamabad till Saturday midnight to agree to restrict the NSA talks to 'terrorism only' after a row over Pakistan's plan to meet Kashmiri separatist leaders and its insistence on broadening the scope of the talks.
Swaraj insisted that what Pakistan described as 'preconditions' were actually 'the agenda for NSAs meet which both leaders agreed to in Ufa.'
In response to Swaraj's comments Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said 'the scheduled NSA-level talks cannot be held on the basis of the preconditions set by India.'
'We have come to the conclusion that the proposed NSA-level talks between the two countries would not serve any purpose if conducted on the basis of the two conditions laid down by the minister' it said in a statement.
This is the second time the nuclear-armed neighbours have cancelled talks since Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office in May last year with both sides choosing to engage in a war of words ahead of the planned two-day meeting of their top security advisers.
'(What it means is more) mutual accusations acrimony more provocations' said Siddharth Varadarajan a political analyst and former editor of the Hindu newspaper in India. 'In other words contribution of the pattern we have seen in the past few weeks.'