Munich: In an interview given at the Munich security conference, Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said it was necessary for both India and Pakistan to resume dialogue for the sake of peace in south Asia.
"The most important thing is that India and Pakistan have to live as good neighbours. Our government, a democratically elected government, started on a policy of normalisation and we were doing fairy well until the unfortunate Mumbai incident that has caused a hiccup and there is a pause in the composite dialogue. We want to get over that as soon as possible and we want to resume dialogue with India because we feel that if we want development in south Asia, if we want regional peace, then normal friendly relations between Pakistan and India will play a significant role," he stated.
On the issue of a report set to be published by Pakistan next week on its investigation into November's militant attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai, Qureshi said that his country would openly share the findings with Pakistan's friends "because we want our investigations to be fair, transparent and open to examination, because the government of Pakistan is serious in prosecuting people who are responsible for the Mumbai incident," he said.
Relations between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan have been strained since militants killed 179 people in Mumbai on November 26, 2008.
India blamed the banned Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) group for the attacks in its commercial hub and said there must have been support from Pakistani security agencies.
Pakistan has denied any involvement by state agencies and has said it was investigating a dossier of information from India.
Qureshi also commented on the issue of the disgraced nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan who was freed by a court on Friday ending five years of house arrest for the man at the centre of the world's most serious proliferation scandal.
Khan, lionised by many Pakistanis as the father of the country's atomic bomb, confessed to selling nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya in 2004, but was immediately pardoned by the government, although his movements were restricted to effective house arrest.
When asked about the latest developments, Qureshi said, "The government of Pakistan has extracted the information that is required. We have successfully broken the network that he had set up and today he has no say and has no access to any of these sensitive areas of Pakistan. We have put in a place a very foolproof command and control authority in Pakistan and we fell that our nuclear assets are safe."
Islamabad had long maintained that Khan was not officially under house arrest but was being held for his own security. It was not immediately clear to what extent security agencies would still restrict his movements.
Pakistan has never let foreign investigators question Khan, saying it had passed on all relevant information about his nuclear proliferation.
Qureshi also said that more will have to be done than just increasing US troop numbers in Afghanistan in order to stabilise the the country.
"Well I personally am of the view that a military surge by itself might not be enough. I would advocate that along with a military surge we've got to have a civilian surge as well, and that would be in line with the holistic approach that the new administration is talking about, with the increase of military troops you increase economic assistance to Pakistan and Afghanistan. You increase social economic development of the border areas of the two countries," Qureshi said on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.
US President Barack Obama, just two weeks in the White House, is expected to approve up to 17,000 more combat troops for Afghanistan to help reverse a growing insurgency that has escalated to the highest levels since the 2001 invasion that toppled the Taliban for harbouring Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda militants.
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