No business as usual with Pakistan: Sushma Swaraj

New Delhi: Pakistan cannot take the Kashmir issue to the International Court of Justice as the Shimla Accord and Lahore agreement are very clear that the matter has to be settled bilaterally, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj said on Monday.

Hinting that it cannot be business as usual now with Pakistan, she pointed out that after the Kulbhushan Jadhav incident and terrorist Burhan Wani being eulogised by Islamabad as a martyr, the situation was not what it was when she visited Pakistan in December 2015.

She also said that India-US ties are progressing under the Trump administration as they were during the Obama presidency.

No Modi, Sharif formal meeting
Ms Swaraj said that there has been “no flip-flop”, nor  “a one step forward two steps backward” policy.

Addressing the media to highlight the achievements of her ministry over three years, Ms Swaraj said that while India wants to resolve all issues through dialogue, dialogue has to be bilateral and terror and talks cannot go together.

Ms Swaraj also ruled out any formal meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit at Astana, Kazakhstan, on June 8-9, saying, “No meeting is scheduled either from their side or from our side.”

At the media conference, Ms Swaraj heaped praise on PM Modi, saying he had exhibited out of the box thinking while accepting an invite from Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif to visit Lahore on the occasion of Mr Sharif’s birthday. “But we got Pathankot (in return),” she said.

The minister also said that India was asking other countries not to see terrorism emanating from Pakistan through the prism of India but to see if international terrorism was in anyway linked with that country.