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Pakistan desires 'meaningful' talks with India; Gilani

Published Updated

gilaniLONDON: Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani said Pakistan desires "meaningful" talks with India and discuss all the core issues, so as to help the two countries move forward.

In an interview here with the British wire service during his stay, Gilani said the two foreign ministers would be meeting in New Delhi on July 27, in a bid to put in more life to the dialogue process.

"We really want to make it meaningful and we really want that there should be good results," Gilani said when asked about his expectations from the meeting.

"We want excellent relations with our neighbour," he said and added the two sides have decided "to discuss all irritants and all core issues so that we should move forward."

The two countries resumed formal peace talks that were stalled following the attacks in Mumbai in November 2008.

Prime Minister Gilani said both Pakistan and India have good relations with Afghanistan.

Gilani said while Pakistan had an important role to play in Afghan stability, "I do hope that India can also play a good role."

He said Pakistan and Afghanistan also need to redouble efforts to end fighting along their border to prevent this jeopardising an improvement in relations.

Gilani said he hoped India could "play a good role" in Afghanistan as it was in the interest of Pakistan to have a stable, peaceful, independent, sovereign Afghanistan.

"We are part of the solution and we are not part of the problem," the Prime Minister said and added both Afghanistan and Pakistan had realised they needed to unite to fight their "common enemy" in militants.

Referring to the recent clashes along the Pakistan-Afghan border Gilani said both he and Karzai were under "tremendous pressure" over the border incursions.

"Therefore I am regularly in touch with President Karzai so that there should be no misunderstanding, but we should avoid all these incursions because it can create problems."

Gilani said Pakistan was committed to help bring stability in Afghanistan that includes reconciliation with Afghan Taliban.

"I am in favour of political reconciliation which should be Afghan-owned and Afghan-led," the Prime Minister told the Reuters.

He said he was ready to support any reconciliation process initiated by Afghanistan. He however stressed that the United States, Pakistan and Afghanistan must all work together.

"They should be on the same page because any political settlement we want to be doubly sure that in future that would not affect Pakistan's stability therefore whatever the roadmap be, it should be shared with us."

Prime Minister Gilani said Pakistan was willing to work with the United States to track down militant leaders, including Ayman al Zawahri, the new head of al Qaeda.

"We have offered them that we should work together and even for other high value targets we should have a mutual cooperation," he said.

"If they have some actionable and credible information, they can share with us. We can jointly work on that."

He said in the past the CIA and the ISI have been cooperating for many years.

"Even for the Abbottabad incident, some of the initial information was passed on by the ISI," Gilani said.

"Therefore we feel let down when we saw the unilateral action from the United States in Abbottabad. That was something that was not liked by the people of Pakistan."

The Prime Minister however did not see the personnel of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operating alongside officers of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.

"Not on the ground. There can be some mechanism because we already have some mechanism of intelligence-sharing and joint operations. Therefore whatever in-built mechanism, that can be worked on," Gilani said.

Copyright APP (Associated Press of Pakistan), 2011

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