ISLAMABAD: Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will not be travelling to Pakistan for this week’s ministerial conference of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries, officials said on Tuesday.
In a latest sign of simmering tensions between the two neighbours, diplomatic sources said that the Indian finance secretary would also not represent his country at the SAARC finance ministers’ meeting in Islamabad on August 25.
The decision to not send Jaitley suggests growing tensions between the two countries. Finance Minister Ishaq Dar was believed to have been ready to receive his Indian counterpart at the airport in an attempt to create a better atmosphere for the SAARC conference.
Earlier this month, Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh travelled to Islamabad to attend the SAARC interior ministers’ meeting. However, his visit ended in more hostilities between the two neighbours, as they used the SAARC platform to accuse each other over the ongoing violence in Indian-held Kashmir (IHK).
India’s decision to downgrade its representation at the SAARC finance ministers’ meeting is seen as a setback and may not augur well for the summit that Pakistan is set to host in November.
The fate of the key regional summit is shrouded in uncertainty due to the increasing diplomatic tiff between Pakistan and India over unabated brutalities of Indian security forces in IHK.
The SAARC summit is scheduled for November in Islamabad. Though the meeting is more than two months away, Pakistani officials are unsure if it will go ahead as planned in the wake of escalating tensions between Pakistan and India. India, like other countries, had earlier confirmed its participation.
Since 2004, this is the first time Pakistan is hosting the SAARC summit. Then Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had travelled to Islamabad after months of tensions between the two countries. Vajpayee’s meeting with then president Gen Pervez Musharraf on the sidelines of the summit led to a major breakthrough as the two sides agreed to resume bilateral dialogue to discuss all outstanding issues, including Kashmir.
However, this time the situation appears to be different, as relations between the two countries have gone from bad to worse over the past few weeks.
New Delhi is upset over Islamabad’s ‘aggressive diplomacy’ on Kashmir by highlighting human rights violations being committed by Indian security forces in the disputed valley.
In an attempt to counter Pakistan’s move, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Independence Day speech accused Islamabad of committing human rights violation in Balochistan.
