india

Updated: Nov 25, 2018 23:16 IST

Minister of state for external affairs VK Singh said the Pakistan prime minister wasn’t trusted by his own team members because of his inability to last long enough on the wicket as a batsman, referring to Imran Khan’s cricketing career.

“Let him prove that he can be trusted. If he proves he can’t be trusted, so be it,” the minister said about prime minister Khan to reporters after an event at the Indian embassy in Washington. Singh was answering a question if Khan can be trusted in the context of India-Pakistan relations.

As a batsman, “if he stayed at the wicket for a longer period of time he could be trusted but he went out,” the minister said, adding, “I don’t think his own team trusted him. Let’s see.”

Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan, who started his career as a fast bowler, grew to become one of the world’s best all-rounders of his time — scored more than 3,800 runs and took 362 wickets in test cricket — and led the team to its first and only World Cup championship in 1992.

It wasn’t immediately known if VK Singh was referring to any specific instance or general expressing dissatisfaction with Khan.

In the 1992 tournament, Khan had faced a revolt from senior players just before a crucial match. There was dissatisfaction over Khan’s “domineering” style and the fact he was not bowling himself all that much because of fitness issues, according to some players of the team. But a lack of trust for his inability to last at the crease wasn’t mentioned among them.

Since taking office last August, prime minister Khan has sought to be seen as actively pushing for normalization of ties with India. He proposed, for one, the external affairs ministers of the two countries to meet in New York on the sidelines of the UN general assembly meetings.

India accepted his proposal but later called it off, questioning his intentions after two policemen were killed in Kashmir by terrorists, and the Pakistan government was found to have issued postage stamps celebrating a Hizbul Mujahideen commander killed by security forces in Kashmir.

“We have laid down a very simple parameter,” the minister said in response to a question about what it would take for India to trust the Khan government. “We are willing to talk — and we laid this down in 2014 — on any issue whatsoever provided you create conducive environments for talks.”

“Let them do it, we will know then the intentions of the government of Pakistan.”

The MoS external affairs, who was attending an event in Washington, also said he was confident that India will get a waiver from the United States for its purchase of Russian S-400 air defense missile system that could attract secondary sanctions under an American law intended to punish Moscow for interfering in the 2016 election and annexing Crimea from Ukraine.

“The US decides its policies based on relationships, what it feels its friends want, how it must treat its friends and, I am quite sure the way our relationship is we will always get a positive reaction,” Singh said to a question about Indian expectation, following exemptions it got for its Iranian crude imports.

VK Singh is in Washington to inaugurate integrating passport system that compresses the process from application stage to delivery into a much shorter period. It has already been introduced at Indian missions in the United Kingdom.