Pakistan wants to resolve all issues with India: PM Gilani

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan said Tuesday it sought a “negotiated and peaceful resolution” of all disputes with India.

“Pakistan is a peaceful nation. We are against territorial aggrandisement and seek a negotiated and peaceful resolution of all disputes with India,” Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said during his address at the National Defence University here.

“The Indian leaderships’ willingness to resume the stalled dialogue is a step in the right direction for regional peace and progress,” Online news agency quoted Gilani as saying.

India has steadfastly refrained from using the word “dialogue” in its engagement with Pakistan, saying it is time to go beyond nomenclatures and first address the “trust deficit” with its neighbour.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, at his National Press Conference in New Delhi May 24 to mark the first year of the second term of the United Progressive Alliance government, had said: “Pakistan is our neighbour. It is our obligation to make every efforts to normalise relations with India’s neighbours. That’s essential to realise our full developmental potential.”

“Trust deficit is the biggest problem. Unless we tackle that, we can’t make progress. It has been my effort to reduce the gap,” he said.

In a bid to bridge this “trust deficit”, Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna is scheduled to meet his Pakistani counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi in Islamabad July 15.

Before that, Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram is to visit Islamabad for the SAARC home ministers’ conference June 26.

India had suspended the sub-continental composite dialogue in the wake of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack that it has blamed on Pakistani terrorists.

Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone gunman captured alive during the November 26-29, 2008 mayhem and who has been sentenced to death by a Mumbai court, has admitted to being a Pakistani national and has said the Lashkar-e-Taiba terror group had trained him for the attack, which claimed 166 lives.