He emphasized on the fact that the world understand why India removed the special status from Jammu & Kashmir and this matter completely was an internal matter of the country and Pakistan was not a part of this decision.
“What should come on the table, first of all, is the terrorism issue,” he said while addressing the media. “Because that is the root cause of the state of the relationship [with Pakistan].The issue is not Article 370. The issue is Pakistan’s terrorism. There has to be a recognition of that,” added Mr. Jaishankar, pointing out the fact that Pakistan pliably uses cross-border terrorism as a tool to advance its foreign policy goals.
Mr. Jaishankar comments have set the agenda straight for the Indian diplomats when they will defend Indian actions towards Kashmir at the upcoming UN General Assembly. Mr. Jaishankar will be participating in the foreign minister-level meeting of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) on September 26 where the Pakistani foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi will be sharing space with him. Mr. Jaishankar is prepared for any kind of confrontation with his Pakistan counterpart saying, “We will see when that happens.”
He brought up the point that the world understands the reasons behind India’s decision regarding the evocation of Article 370.
“Article 370 was a temporary provision and it had become dysfunctional. It was being arbitraged by a narrow set of people for their gains and by doing that they were impeding development and that lack of development was feeding a sense of separatism and that separatism actually has been utilized by Pakistan to carry out cross-border terrorism,” said Mr. Jaishankar.
