Thaindian News

Indo-Asian News Service
Washington, July 30 (IANS) Pakistan had provided the US with no evidence of India’s alleged involvement in Balochistan though the issue did come up, US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke said after his visit to Islamabad.”I would be misleading if I said it didn’t come up, but the narrow answer to your question is no,” he said Wednesday when asked whether Pakistani leaders had given him any credible evidence of India’s alleged involvement in Balochistan.

Briefing reporters on his trip to Pakistan, Afghanistan and Brussels, Holbrooke made it clear that Kashmir issue was not on his plate.

“That issue is outside my area of ability to discuss,” he said when asked to what extent the resolution of the Kashmir issue would help him in achieving the US goal to dismantle, disrupt and defeat the Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had Wednesday defended the controversial inclusion of Balochistan in a India-Pakistan joint statement issued at Sharm-el-Sheikh in Egypt July 16 after talks between the Indian and the Pakistani prime ministers.

The contentious statement included a reference to threats to Balochistan, a Pakistan border province plagued by unrest, for the first time in a bilateral document between the two countries.

“I told (Pakistani) Prime Minister (Yousuf Raza) Gilani that our conduct is an open book. If Pakistan has any evidence, and they have not given me any and no dossier has been given, we are willing to look at it because we have nothing to hide,” Manmohan Singh told parliament.

The joint statement in which Balochistan had been included caused a storm in India.

Spokesperson of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party Ravi Shankar Prasad said: “By one stroke you have given some kind of culpable legitimacy to the government of Pakistan to allege in the international forum that India foments problems in Balochistan.”