India and Pakistan should 'forget' Siachen and Kargil if they wish to move forward in improving relations, Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri said on Wednesday.
He likened India's hold over Siachen heights to the 1999 Kargil operations by Pakistan and said: "If India talks about Kargil, Pakistan will talk about Siachen. The story then will be unending. So let us not always try and go back into history."
"Sometimes it is good to look at history to learn from the past. But you should not look at history to reinforce certain things that are not considered in positive light. Let us forget Siachen and Kargil, if we wish to go forward," he told PTI in an interview.
On exiled former premier Nawaz Sharif's allegations on the Kargil issue, Kasuri said: "Indian media has come to a conclusion, so has the Indian government that President Pervez Musharraf genuinely wants to bring about peace."
"Simply by raking up Kargil, they (those who are raising it) are trying to tarnish the reputation of the President," he said without directly referring to Sharif's allegations that he was kept in the dark by the then army chief General Musharraf about the 1999 operations.
Sharif in his biography Ghaddar Kaun? Nawaz Sharif Ki Kahani Unki Zubani has alleged that he came to know of the Karigl misadventure when the then Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee telephoned him to inquire about the presence of Pakistani troops in Kargil heights.
Musharraf, who too is writing a book, has joined the issue with Sharif by releasing four photographs in which the former premier is seen visiting Khel in Northern Areas on Feb 5, 1999 during which he was purportedly briefed about the army's Kargil plan.
The photographs were shown during a TV interview. "A prime minister is not worth his salt if he is being informed about Kargil operation by his Indian counterpart," Musharraf had said.
Sharif's political associate, Raja Zafarull Haq, who was seen attending the briefing along with the former prime minister, has denied that Kargil figured in the briefing. Haq has said the briefing dealt with the laying of a new road in the area. He along with Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-N demanded the constitution of a Commission to unravel the details of Kargil.
Javed Hashmi, one of the leaders of the opposition Alliance for Restoration of Democracy (ARD), said the opposition will form a Commission on its own if the government failed to constitute one.
