General Bajwa put pressure on me to restore ties with India: Imran Khan

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan has said former army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa had pressurised him to restore friendship with India, the media reported.

Bajwa wanted friendship with India and put pressure on him for this, Khan was quoted as saying by The News.

Bajwa said something one day and retracted it the next day. His accountability should be initiated within the army, he said.

Answering a question about the general elections, the PTI chairman said if the elections were not held in 90 days, there would be no Constitution left in the country and then he would take direct action.

Earlier this month, Pakistan again denied it was holding any "backchannel" talks with bordering India but reiterated its desire for a peaceful neighbourhood, The Express Tribune reported.

"At this stage, there is no back channel (talks) between Pakistan and India," said Foreign Office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch while responding to a question at a weekly briefing, The Express Tribune reported.

Relations between the two neighbouring countries have remained at a standstill for the last many years.

Pakistan had not only downgraded diplomatic ties but suspended bilateral trade with India.

However, there was a chance of a possible thaw in ties when two countries engaged in backchannel talks in 2021. The secret meetings between senior security officials of Pakistan and India in the UAE led to the renewal of ceasefire understanding along the Line of Control (LoC) in February 2021, The Express Tribune reported.

The next move was to restore bilateral trade but the process came to a halt when the government of then premier Khan turned down the decision to import sugar and cotton from India.

Some reports later claimed that backchannel talks even discussed the possibility of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Pakistan.

(Sanjeev Sharma can be reached at Sanjeev.s@ians.in)

--IANS

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