By IANS,
Colombo : Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Saturday bluntly told his Pakistani counterpart that the suicide attack on the Indian mission in Kabul and ceasefire violations on the Jammu and Kashmir border had hurt bilateral relations.
Manmohan Singh told Yousaf Raza Gilani on the sidelines of the 15th South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit here that “such attacks” would have to stop for India and Pakistan to rebuild their strained ties.
Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon told reporters here that Gilani promised to conduct an investigation into New Delhi’s charges that the Pakistani intelligence was to blame for the July 7 suicide bombing at the Kabul mission that killed 50 people including two Indian diplomats.
Manmohan Singh identified increased infiltration of terrorists from Pakistan into Jammu and Kashmir and violations of the ceasefire along the Line of Control (LoC) dividing the state between the two countries as other important factors causing a setback in bilateral relations.
“It was a candid and open conversation between two individuals who wanted to go forward,” Menon said.