After Pakistan’s Prime Nawaz Sharif assured his counterpart Narendra Modi on taking action against the perpetrators of the Pathankot airbase attack, India is now waiting to see for Pakistan to walk the talk. Sources said India will wait for another 10 days to see if there is any visible action on ground by the Pakistan authorities in the form of crackdown on Jaish-e-Mohammed — the terror group named by India responsible for the attack, before entering into formal talks with Pakistan.
While the Indian side would like the talk to go on, sources said that at present there is no point scheduling the meeting at Foreign Secretary level to draw a roadmap for other things when the core issue hampering India-Pakistan relationship is terrorism. Sources added that India is waiting to see the nature of Pakistan’s response to decide its course of action.
India has already given some key leads to the Pakistani authorities to act upon while a formal request for judicial assistance in the form of letter Rogatory (lR) is being prepared to be sent as soon as possible. However, sources said that if the intention is to crack down and assist probe, then the leads given by India as of now is sufficient for action.
Sharif’s assurance to Modi is seen as a supportive gesture even though Pakistan’s President Mamnoon Hussain on Tuesday, while condemning terror attack at Pathankot, said that Pakistan would continue to adhere to the principled stand of the right of self-determination of Kashmiri people which is the basis of its foreign policy. The President said that Jammu & Kashmir is a Muslim majority area and that efforts underway for turning the majority into a minority there would never be successful.