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New Pak foreign minister swears by old dogma on India

Pakistan has a new foreign minister, but its stance on India is unchanged.

In an interview a week after switching from finance minister to foreign minister, Sartaj Aziz said Kashmir must be the centre of negotiations between the two countries.

Nuclear weapons tests by India in May, followed quickly by answering tests from Pakistan, focused the world's fearful attention on India and Pakistan. The prime ministers of the two countries met in Colombo last month, but their talks were not very successful.

Pakistan insisted in Colombo that negotiations focus on Kashmir but India proposed talks on opening up trade and taking other confidence-building measures along with discussing Kashmir, he said.

"If the Indian side wants to use discussions of other issues to relegate Kashmir, then the other issues of course will not move forward,'' Aziz said. "It is very difficult for the economic relationship to move forward if the political relationship is moving backward.''

UNI

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