NEW DELHI: Former NSA Shiv Shankar Menon today rued that the domestic politics of India and Pakistan does not support a change of narrative required to normalise ties between the neighbours.
Shankar, who served as the Foreign Secretray from 2006 to 2009, said the Pakistani Army is also “reluctant” to have robust relations with India and the two countries have “profound misunderstandings” about each other.
To a question on the claim of former Pakistani foreign minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri that both sides had come to an agreement on the Kashmir issue in 2007 through back channel talks, Shankar said there were still some aspects left to concur on.
“In March 2007, after most of the progress had been done Musharaff said, ‘I can’t fight on all fronts’. He had just sacked the Chief Justice (Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry),” the former national security adviser said.
Chaudhry’s sacking had led to massive protests by the legal fraternity and the civil society in Pakistan.
In his book ‘Neither a Hawk nor a Dove’, Kasuri has claimed that in 2007 the “solution to Kashmir was in the grasp of both Governments”. (AGENCIES)
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