Any talks with Pak now will only be on PoK: Rajnath Singh

KALKA (HARYANA): In a further hardening of relations with Pakistan, defence minister Rajnath Singh on Sunday cited Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) as the single issue on which any dialogue could be held with the neighbouring country. “Now, if talks are held, they will only be held on the issue of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. There will be no talks on any other issue,” he said at an election rally here.
Singh said there have been suggestions that India and Pakistan should talk but the latter will have to meet the precondition of stopping support to terrorism before coming to the dialogue table.“What do they have to talk about? What is the topic? Why should there be talks? There will be a dialogue with Pakistan only after it ends support for terrorism. If Pakistan doesn’t do this, there is no reason for holding the talks.”
Pakistan reacted by saying that Singh’s remarks were "reflective of the predicament that India finds itself in". Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said, "As for the Jammu & Kashmir dispute, Pakistan’s position is based on UN Charter principles and international law and remains unchanged. The Jammu & Kashmir dispute is to be decided on the basis of the UN Security Council resolutions and in accordance with the wishes of the Kashmiri people."

Singh’s remarks come just two days after he had suggested that the no first use of nukes policy is open to review . While stressing that India has strictly adhered to the no-first-use doctrine, Rajnath had said, “What happens in future depends on the circumstances.”
Singh’s remarks come even as the UN Security Council (UNSC) only confined itself to closed door informal consultations on the situation in J&K after India reorganised the state into two Union territories.
It is quite clear that the quality of talks with Pakistan would change after the Indian government made Article 370 inoperable. In addition to Singh, home minister Amit Shah had also said in Parliament that India would lay claim to both PoK and Aksai Chin, which was illegally ceded by Pakistan to China.
On Sunday, Singh emphasized that the scrapping of Article 35A and the defanging of Article 370 was an internal issue of India. But the move has riled Pakistan. “Now it (Pakistan) is knocking every door and approaching various countries for help. Have we committed any crime? And they are trying to threaten us. However, America, perceived to be the most powerful country in the world by people, has snubbed Pakistan, telling them to initiate a dialogue with India,” he said.
Attacking the opposition, Singh said it used to say that if anybody touched Article 370, the country would be divided and BJP won't be able to come to power. “I want to say it clearly that BJP does not do politics with the objective of forming government. We do politics of nation building. Under no circumstances, we will allow the prestige of our country to be tarnished,” he added.
Singh said Pakistan intended to destabilise India with the help of terrorism. “Prime Minister Narendra Modi has given a befitting reply to Pakistan on the Pulwama attack. He sat with a few of us and decided that we will give Pakistan a tough reply. And our IAF personnel went and bombed Balakot and killed a large number of terrorists,” he added.
Targeting Congress over the Rafale controversy, Singh said: “The main opposition party was creating a lot of ruckus about the Rafale deal. They did nothing to acquire Rafale-like fighter jets for the Indian Air Force. We would not have to send our brave IAF personnel for strikes to Balakot (if the jets were acquired earlier). We would have had the capability to target the terrorists from India itself. We will soon acquire these fighter jets,” he said.