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Pak must shed its 'compulsive hostility': Jaswant

External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh has said that Pakistan must ''shed its compulsive hostility'' towards India for creating a proper environment for the resumption of bilateral dialogue. In an interview with Asiaweek, Singh said, ''Pakistan suffers from compulsive hostility towards our country. India has no such compulsive thing against Pakistan. Unless Pakistan sheds this hostility, how are we to move forward?''

Singh said that the recent coup in Pakistan had disappointed him. He considered it regrettable that Pakistan had repeatedly displayed ''impatience with the demands of democracy.'' The absence of democracy was a setback. It ran counter to the main channel of developments in this century.

The minister said that India was not averse to the dialogue process. ''We remain committed to it. But for that a proper environment has to be created,'' he added. The least India expected was that ''this daily invocation of jihad and encouragement to cross-border terrorism at the level of the state or through agencies of the state must stop,'' he stressed.

UNI

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