India cancels rare Pakistan meeting

New Delhi : India cancelled yesterday a rare meeting between its foreign minister and her Pakistani counterpart scheduled to have taken place on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, only a day after announcing it would take place. The Indian foreign ministry blamed the “latest brutal killings of our security personnel by Pakistan-based entities and the recent release of a series of twenty postage stamps by Pakistan glorifying a terrorist and terrorism”.

The statement did not specify which killings it was referring to, but earlier this week an Indian border guard in the disputed territory of Kashmir was killed and his body mutilated. And on Friday three policemen were found dead after being abducted in Indian-administered Kashmir. The meeting in New York between Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj and Pakistan’s Shah Mehmood Qureshi was only confirmed on Thursday. Qureshi told Pakistan’s ARY TV channel that he was “surprised and disappointed”

“We had given a positive signal and India too had hinted about negotiations,” he said. “India has once again shown that it cares more about its own politics than regional peace and stability,” he added. Asked if Pakistan will approach India again for negotiations, he said: “No, we wanted negotiations in a dignified way.”