NEW DELHI/WASHINGTON: Even as US President Donald Trump “encouraged” Prime Minister Narendra Modi to work for improvement of India-Pakistan ties, India steadfastly maintained there couldn’t be a dialogue until Islamabad stopped using terror as an instrument of state policy.

The White House had said in a readout that Trump “encouraged” Modi to improve relations with Pakistan and fulfil his promise to better the lives of the Kashmiri people. Addressing the Asia Society, foreign minister S Jaishankar said, “India has no problem talking to Pakistan, but we have a problem talking to Terroristan.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi soaked up encomiums from world leaders on Tuesday for India’s lighting up of the United Nations with a roof-top solar park, while foreign minister S Jaishankar dismantled the dark and dystopian future of the subcontinent presented by Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan at a United Nations press conference where Khan warned of massacre, genocide, war, and nuclear conflagration if the global community did not heed Pakistan’s narrative on Kashmir.

In a sharp counter to Khan, Jaishankar told an Asia Society audience that problems with Pakistan went beyond Kashmir because it had created an entire industry of terrorism for a foundational attack on India. India and Pakistan have had no substantive engagement since December 2015 when they restarted the dialogue process as ‘comprehensive bilateral dialogue’.

That initiative was quickly undone by the terror attack on the Pathankot airbase in 2016. On Tuesday, Jaishankar underscored India’s position that Pakistan had created an industry of terrorism and that revoking J&K’s special status under Article 370 had no implications for India's external boundaries.

“We are sort of reformatting this within our existing boundaries. It obviously drew a reaction from Pakistan, it drew a reaction from China. These are two very different reactions. I think, for Pakistan, it was a country which has really created an entire industry of terrorism to deal with the Kashmir issue. In my view, it’s actually bigger than Kashmir, I think they have created it for India,” Jaishankar said.

He added that in the Indian decision on J&K’s special status, Pakistan now saw its “investment” of 70 years undercut if this policy succeeded. “So theirs is today a reaction of anger, of frustration in many ways, because you have built an entire industry over a long period of time,” he said. Pakistan, he added, has to accept that the “model which they have built for themselves, no longer works. More fireworks are expected in the coming days with both Imran Khan and Modi scheduled to address the UN General Assembly on September 27.

