New Delhi, January 17

A day after Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif offered to talk to India on “burning issues”, Islamabad walked back on his comments by stating that Islamabad will not hold negotiations until New Delhi reversed the August 5, 2019, revocation of Article 370.

“Without India’s revocation of this step, negotiations are not possible,” said the Pakistan PMO on Tuesday.

In an interview to the Al-Arabiya television on Monday, Sharif had also requested the UAE to act as mediator as it had once done earlier to facilitate a ceasefire on the Line of Control (LoC).

Want peace, have learnt our lesson

My message to PM Modi is that let us sit down on the table and have serious and sincere talks to resolve our burning issues like Kashmir…. We have learned our lesson and we want to live in peace. — Shehbaz Sharif, Pakistan PM

“I have requested my brother (UAE) President Mohd Bin Zayed… he also has good relations with India. He can play a very important role in bringing the two countries to the talking table and I give my word of honour that we will be talking to Indians with sincerity of purpose, but it takes two to tango,” he had said

Stating that Pakistan had learnt its lesson from the three wars with India which have “only brought more misery, poverty and unemployment to the people,” Sharif said: “We want to alleviate poverty, achieve prosperity and provide education and health facilities and employment to our people and not waste our resources on bombs and ammunition, this is the message I want to give to PM Modi.”

“My message to the Indian leadership and Prime Minister Modi is that let us sit down on the table and have serious and sincere talks to resolve our burning issues like Kashmir,” he said. But his peace offering was also conditional on Kashmir, an aspect which was reiterated by the Pakistan PMO. “In Kashmir, flagrant human rights violations are taking place day in and day out. India had usurped any semblance of the autonomy given to the Kashmiris according to Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, as the autonomy was revoked in August 2019,” he said.

Sharif also said both countries were nuclear powers and if the conflict triggered a war, “then there will be no one left to tell what happened”

India has all along maintained that terrorism and talks cannot go together. New Delhi also maintains that revoking the special status of J&K or taking the issue to the UN is off the table.