Kashmir is Indo-Pak matter: Obama agrees

From Lalit K Jha and Yoshita Singh
New York

President Barack Obama today agreed with Prime Minister Narendra Modi that Kashmir is a bilateral issue to be resolved between India and Pakistan as they held talks here during which terrorism emanating from Pakistan also came up.

“There was a broad acknowledgement that this is a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan and people were happy for India and Pakistan to resolve it among themselves,” External Affairs Ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup told reporters here when asked whether Kashmir came up during Modi and Obama talks.

Swarup, while briefing on Modi’s meetings with Obama as well as UK Premier David Cameron and French President Francois Hollande, said Pakistan came up in the context of terrorism.

“There was a discussion on Pakistan in one of the meetings in the context of terrorism, broadly the idea was if terrorism has to be fought then all countries have to be on the same page. You can’t have some countries talking of good and bad terrorists,” he said.

To a question on why it was taking so long in framing the definition of terror by the UN, Swarup said, “Some, in particular, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) lobby wants to include freedom fighters for instances in the definition of terrorism.”

He said, “Some compromise formulations have been put forward but they have not yet been agreed.”

He said India hopes that things would move forward in the 70th anniversary of the UN.

On ISIS, Swarup said, “There was no discussion on the terror group as such, but Modi himself said that terrorism has to be fought collectively and globally then all the countries have to be on the same page.” PTI