Pakistan For Result-oriented Talks With India

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan News: Pakistan wants to resume peace talks with India but they should be wide-ranging and include all disputes between the nuclear-armed rivals, including the disputed region of Kashmir, a senior Pakistani official said Thursday.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit said Islamabad has not yet formally responded to New Delhi’s offer of resumed talks, but Pakistan looks forward to the foreign secretaries from the two countries meeting to discuss how an all-encompassing dialogue could be renewed.

India last week offered to resume high-level peace talks with Pakistan, a year after wide-ranging discussions were halted after the deadly siege on Mumbai in 2008, which New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based militants.

The United States has been pressuring both sides to resume talks. It hopes reduced tensions on the subcontinent would enable Islamabad to shift troops more India’s border and deploy more against Taliban militants on the Afghan border — a key to U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.

India did not give details of the proposed talks, but has indicated that counterterrorism would be high on its agenda.

Basit reiterated Pakistan wants to focus on the so-called “composite dialogue” that existed before the Mumbai attacks, and include the issue of Kashmir’s sovereignty. The dialogue began in 2004 but failed to resolve the neighbors’ competing claims over the divided Himalayan region.

“This is what we hope,” Basit told reporters Thursday. “The whole purpose of any engagement between our two countries should be to resolve all disputes.”

He said a year’s worth of talking had been lost because India pulled out after the Mumbai attacks.

“When we engage with India again, engagement should be irreversible and should produce results,” Basit said. “One hopes that this time around India will not bac