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Terrorist attack puts peace dialogue at risk

NEW DELHI — Just when nuclear-armed neighbours India and Pakistan agreed to start high-level talks for the first time in more than a year, a terrorist attack has put everything on hold.

NEW DELHI — Just when nuclear-armed neighbours India and Pakistan agreed to start high-level talks for the first time in more than a year, a terrorist attack has put everything on hold.

India pointed the finger at Pakistan for a strike on Monday that killed three civilians and four policemen in Punjab, a state bordering Pakistan.

Pakistan’s foreign ministry condemned the attack “in the strongest terms” and extended sympathies to the government and people of India.

The incident came only weeks after Prime Minister Narendra Modi held talks with Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif for the first time since he took power in May 2014.

Top security officials from both countries have been planning to meet soon to restart a peace dialogue.

“It’s all up in the air now,” Mr C Uday Bhaskar, director of the Society for Policy Studies in New Delhi, said of the proposed talks.

“The attack shows a certain degree of professionalism and bears the hallmark of a larger agenda of derailing the process.”

Soon after the attack began, an Indian official told reporters in New Delhi the militants were suspected to be members of Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Taiba. Home Minister Rajnath Singh later told Press Trust of India he couldn’t understand why “cross-border terror incidents are taking place when we want good relations with our neighbour”.

Relations between the two have been patchy since 2008, when attacks on a train station and hotels in Mumbai killed 166.

India blamed Lashkar-e-Taiba, and cut off ties with Pakistan until it admitted in 2009 the attack could have been planned on its soil.

Peace efforts since then have failed to get off the ground. After Mr Sharif attended Mr Modi’s inauguration in May 2014, India cancelled follow-up talks when Pakistan’s envoy met with Kashmiri separatists. This was followed by the worst border fighting in a decade in Kashmir.

India sees divisions between Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership scuttling any peace efforts. While many Indians view Mr Sharif as sincere, they also see his peace overtures being undermined by Pakistan’s army.

“India’s big fear is that the power to make critical security decisions on policy does not rest with the civilian leaders of Pakistan,” said Mr Sreeram Sundar Chaulia, dean of the Jindal School of International Affairs. BLOOMBERG

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