Pakistan's policy on terrorism is ineffective, duplicitous, says ex-diplomat

Former chief secretary Naresh Chandra on Sunday slammed Pakistan for its selective and weak policy against terrorism and praised the diplomatic efforts made by India against Islamabad on global platform.

"Pakistan has not been able to draw any support from any country that is because over the years the level of resentment and frustration about Pakistan is selective and weak policy against terrorism has been ineffective and duplicitous," he said.

"Then our government has done lots of work in world capitals and got a consensus that Pakistan is not doing enough and it has still not given up the instrument of terror to pressurize India into coming to talks with them on the attempts. So, now today the position is that if you don't talk then we will go on infiltrating and causing trouble to you, that has what snubbed," he added.

"So they have to make fundamental choices now , are they going to pursuit their old bad ways of using terrorist and jihadis to pressurize India or they are going to have a new type of agenda for dialogue with India. So, they are at the state of flux at the moment," Chandra told ANI here.

The former chief secretary's remark came as Pakistan's High Commissioner to India, Abdul Basit, earlier said that Islamabad never wanted any increase in tensions with New Delhi.

"We never wanted to escalate the situation either vertically or horizontally," Basit said in an interview published in the Outlook magazine on Friday.

"Pakistan has always proportionately responded to whatever [ceasefire] violation has taken place in the past. That continues to be our stance," he said.