New Delhi, March 15: Former minister of state for external affairs Shashi Tharoor Tuesday asked the government to keep up pressure on Pakistan to take steps against terror groups targeting India while efforts continue to resume talks.
“It is not talking, but talking what we talk that is the issue,” Tharoor said during the debate in the Lok Sabha on demand for grants of the ministry of external affairs.
He added that if India refused to speak to Pakistan, it could be labelled as a intransigent nation in the eyes of the world, without getting any benefit from the policy.
But, Tharoor added it was necessary that the government should make it clear to Pakistan that it had to take action against groups or individuals plannning and inciting terror strikes against India.
Last month, India and Pakistan agreed to resume talks during a meeting between their foreign secretaries in Thimphu on the sidelines of a South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) meeting.
The composite dialogue between the two neighbours stalled after the Nov 26, 2008, terror carnage in Mumbai unleashed by ten Pakistani terrorists that left 166 people dead.
The former minister also made trenchant remarks against the Pakistani Army, accusing it of requiring a constant enemy in India to justify its wide-ranging hold on the nation’s economy and polity.
“Other states have armies, in Pakistan the army has a state,” he said, adding that no other defence organisation anywhere in the world has such a large share in a country’s GDP as the Pakistani Army did in the economy.
—IANS