India not to discuss substantive issues with Pak for now

New Delhi, Jun 10 (PTI) India is not going to discuss
substantive issues like Kashmir with Pakistan in the proposed
rounds of dialogue but is only attempting to create the "right
atmosphere" for removing the trust deficit for a broad
dialogue later.
"We are not going to discuss substantive issues like
Kashmir. As of now our effort is to create a right atmoshpere.
Only then some degree of trust can be created between the two
countries," highly-placed sources in the government said.
They said the effort is for eliminating the trust
deficit and "we are not not talking to Pakistan on four issues
that concern us".
There was no alternative but to talk to Pakistan as
war was not an option, they said.
The government's stand was made clear in response to a
question at a journalistic interaction whether the
government's current moves to resume dialogue with Pakistan
would be picking up of threads from where the Musharraf regime
left or would it be a fresh de novo effort from the beginning.
This was in the context of former Pakistani Foreign
Minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri's recent claim that India and
Pakistan were close to signing an agreement on some crucial
issues.
Former President Pervez Musharraf had mooted four
areas on which the Pakistani claimed the two countries had
come close to an agrement. The areas included demilitarisation
of Kashmir on both sides and the Siachen glacier and some kind
of autonomy to these areas.
Recently in Bhutan, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani decided
on resuming dialogue between the two countries. External
Affairs Minister S M Krishna will be visiting Pakistan in the
middle of next month. (More) PTI