Pakistan has signaled a willingness to open peace talks with its neighbor as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi appears set to return to power in New Delhi after an election fought in the shadow of renewed confrontation between the nuclear-armed enemies.
However, in a possible warning to India, Pakistan also announced that it has conducted a training launch of a Shaheen II surface-to-surface ballistic missile, which it said is capable of delivering conventional and nuclear weapons at a range of up to 2,400km.
“Shaheen II is a highly capable missile which fully meets Pakistan’s strategic needs towards maintenance of deterrence stability in the region,” the Pakistani military said in a statement that made no direct mention of its neighbor.
Pakistani Minister of Foreign Affairs Shah Mehmud Qureshi on Wednesday spoke briefly with his Indian counterpart at the sidelines of a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization member states in the capital of Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek.
“We never speak bitterly, we want to live like good neighbors and settle our outstanding issues through talks,” Qureshi said following the meeting.
The remark follows months of tension between the long-time rivals, which came close to war in February over the disputed region of Kashmir, which both sides have claimed since independence from Britain in 1947.
Following a suicide attack in Kashmir that killed 40 members of an Indian paramilitary police force in February, Indian jets launched a raid inside Pakistan, striking what New Delhi said was a Jaish-e Mohammed training camp, the radical group that claimed the Kashmir attack.
In response, Pakistan conducted a retaliatory strike and jets from the two nations fought a dogfight in the skies over Kashmir during which an Indian pilot was shot down and captured.
Amid international pressure to end the conflict, Pakistan returned the pilot and there were no further strikes, but tensions remained high, with regular exchanges of artillery fire from both sides in Kashmir.
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has repeatedly offered to start talks with India to resolve the Kashmir issue.
Khan last month said that he believed there was more prospect of peace talks with India if Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party won the election.
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