GOA, India (Reuters) -Pakistan’s foreign minister on Friday said India’s decision to end the special status of Jammu & Kashmir territory in 2019 has undermined the environment for holding talks between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.
Kashmir is claimed in full but ruled in part by the two who have fought two of their three wars over control of the region. The special status given to the Indian side was revoked in 2019 when the Indian government split it into two federally controlled territories. Pakistan calls the moves illegal.
“The onus is on India to create a conducive environment for talks,” Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation regional bloc in the Indian state of Goa.
Bhutto-Zardari’s visit to India is the first by a Pakistani foreign minister to Delhi in over a decade and has garnered a lot of media attention in both countries. The two share frosty relations and have downgraded their diplomatic ties.
The Pakistani foreign minister said that, despite his rare visit to India, there was no change in the status of diplomatic relations.
But he added that politics and foreign policy should not hold “hostage” sporting ties between the rivals.
Historically, cricket, wildly popular on both sides of the border, has been the strongest basis of ties. But there remain doubts over whether the Pakistani team would travel to India for the cricket World Cup later this year.
“I hope we’re in a position to not have sports suffer as a result of foreign policy,” Bhutto-Zardari said when asked if Pakistan would send its team to India for the event.
Pakistan last played in India in 2016, while India have not visited Pakistan since 2008.
(Reporting by Gibran Peshimam; Writing by Shivam Patel; Editing by Toby Chopra and Jonathan Oatis)
