Pakistan National Security Advisor (NSA) Moeed Yusuf on Tuesday said he would not travel to India for an upcoming conference on Afghanistan on November 10 as he dismissed India’s role as a “peacemaker” in the war-torn neighbouring nation.
Talking to reporters in Islamabad, Yusuf said that he will not travel to India to attend the conference hosted by India on Afghanistan on November 10, The Express Tribune reported.
Earlier, Pakistan’s Foreign Office confirmed the invitation from India but said the decision would be taken at an appropriate time.
Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi had earlier said that Pakistan’s decision would be based on keeping in view the current state of relationship between the two nuclear-armed neighbours. Yusuf said that Pakistan, unlike the West, could not disengage with Afghanistan due to its regional proximity , “It may be a luxury for the western world sitting 10,000 miles away but we do not have an option to disengage from Afghanistan ,” he said .
Ties between India and Pakistan nose-dived after a terror attack on the Pathankot Air Force base in 2016 by terror groups based in the neighbouring country. Subsequent attacks, including one on an Indian Army camp in Uri, further deteriorated the relationship.
The relationship dipped further after India’s warplanes pounded a Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist training camp deep inside Pakistan on February 26, 2019, in response to the Pulwama terror attack in which 40 CRPF jawans were killed.
Yusuf said that engagement with Afghanistan was not a political matter for Pakistan but a humanitarian one and a matter of our national security”.
The Taliban seized power in Afghanistan on August 15, two weeks before the US was set to complete its troop withdrawal after a costly two-decade war.
