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Islamabad: Pakistan and India will resume their stalled peace dialogue this month, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told the upper house of parliament on Friday.
In a speech winding up a foreign policy debate in the Senate, he said the new government of Pakistan was committed to taking forward the dialogue process with India initiated in 2004.
He said his Indian counterpart Pranab Mukherjee would visit Islamabad on May 21 to resume the peace process.
"If South Asia is to move towards its real potential and overcome poverty then Pakistan and India will have to improve their relations," Qureshi said.
But he reiterated Pakistan's traditional stand that the resolution of the lingering Kashmir dispute was the key to lasting peace and full normalisation of relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbours. "We are committed to a just and peaceful resolution of the Kashmir issue in accordance with United Nations resolutions and aspirations of Kashmiri people," he said.
He said the confidence building measures the two countries had taken as a result of the comprehensive dialogue had created conditions for moving from "conflict management to conflict resolution".
Speaking about terrorism, he said the war on terror could not be won only through military force. "This war will be won by winning hearts and minds of people."
Approach
He said the US had begun to understand Pakistan's multi-faceted approach combining economic development, negotiations and military means to tackle the menace.
Qureshi, however, made it clear that the government would not negotiate with terrorists but only with those who were ready to renounce violence and lay down arms.
He vowed that only Pakistani forces would operate inside Pakistani territory and no foreign forces would be allowed any "hot pursuit" of militants across the border from Afghanistan. Qureshi said that the US had pledged an assistance of $750 million (Dh2.8 billion) for development and welfare of people in Pakistan's frontier tribal districts.
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