‘India, Pakistan to work on what they agreed to at Ufa’

New Delhi: India is going to work with Pakistan according to the joint statement issued after the Narendra Modi-Nawaz Sharif meeting in Ufa, in Russia, and "will not judge by the airwaves" of what Pakistan's National Security Advisor Sartaj Aziz has said in Islamabad, sources said on Tuesday.

According to sources, the India-Pakistan joint statement "is an accurate reflection of the spirit" of the Modi-Sharif meeting in Ufa.

The one-hour meeting in Ufa was "about how to go about talking to each other in a high-level focused way", the sources said.

The joint statement was formulated by both the foreign secretaries – India's S. Jaishankar and Pakistan's Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhary – and "captures the main points of the meeting" and "reasonably, accurately reflects the substance of the meeting", sources said.

The statement, read out to the press in Ufa, was shown to Modi and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval before being read out, and likewise taken by the Pakistani foreign secretary to be approved by his higher-ups, said the sources.

The statement was jointly formed by the two foreign secretaries just after the meeting, and "the idea that it is not true and accurate means that both (foreign secretaries) are misleading", the sources added.

Both the prime ministers came to the meeting "with a fairly positive intent", which was preceded by their phone calls to each other with regard to the Yemen evacuation, the Nepal earthquake and the Ramadan greetings extended by Modi.

The sources said that Sartaj Aziz's statements have "not in any way affected what was agreed upon" in Ufa and both sides would begin work on a meeting between their National Security Advisors and the meeting of the DG Border Security Force with the DG Pakistan Rangers and between their Directors General of Military Operations.

According to the sources, what Aziz said in Islamabad does not concern India. "We have to judge on what they said to us," the informed sources added.

To a question whether Kashmir was discussed at the Ufa meeting, the source said that "broadly the contours of Kashmir – in a way" was discussed at Ufa.

"We want to do things (begin work on the agreed points) sooner than rather than later," the sources added.

(IANS)