War is not an option: Pakistan envoy

 

abdul-basit

Ruling out any possibility of a confrontation between the two South Asian countries, Pakistan’s High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit has said that war is not an option and asserted that India and Pakistan are cooperating on the Pathankot terror attack probe. He also said that only fools can think that confrontation would solve the problems between India and Pakistan.

Underscoring the need to maintain harmony between the two countries, Mr Basit said that both India and Pakistan would have been benefitted enormously had there been peace in this region.
“Till the time we don’t sit and discuss the issues, I don’t think the problem can be solved,” he added.

The Pakistani envoy expressed hope that the investigating agencies would get to the bottom of the terror attack on the Pathankot air base, which has stressed bilateral ties between the two estranged neighbours.  Mr Basit said: “We are maintaining cooperation on Pathankot. Let’s hope we will be able to get to the bottom of that incident.”

In his address at a conference in New Delhi on May 30, Mr Basit spoke about how the Pathankot terror attack derailed the momentum in the dialogue process between India and Pakistan. “We saw Sushma Swaraj visiting Pakistan and later Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited our country. The dialogue process between both nations witnessed a pace, but unfortunately Pathankot attack happened and the FS-level talks could not take place,” he said.

“Today it has been five months of Pathankot attack, but the dialogue process between India and Pakistan hasn’t resumed,” he said.

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