Pakistan has maintained a friendly and cooperative policy towards South Asian states due to its peaceful coexistence policy. Pakistan has generally aimed for a peaceful neighbourhood and as well as peace within the region to improve the living standards of the South Asian people and establish stable, diplomatic, economic and people-to-people relations.

However, the postures adopted by our eastern and western neighbours show that neither New Delhi nor Kabul aspires to cooperate with Islamabad for regional peace and stability. Rather their actions continue to demonstrate their intent to harm Pakistan and its national security.

Under its policy of peaceful coexistence, Islamabad has made numerous assertions to initiate a dialogue to resolve outstanding disputes with India. However, New Delhi’s stance towards Pakistan has been severe and inflexible. India has repeatedly associated Pakistan with alleged cross-border terrorism while itself continuing to carry out extraterritorial and extrajudicial killings within Pakistan.

New Delhi has also tried to isolate Pakistan while harming it on international platforms such as the FATF. In May last year, when the Pakistani foreign minister visited India after 13 years for the SCO summit, the then Indian Minister of External Affairs Jaishankar could not hold back his harsh words about treating the Pakistani FM as a representative of the terror industry. This was reflective of the lack of desire on the part of India to accommodate Pakistan.

The belligerence towards Pakistan continued during the 18th Lok Sabha election campaign in India. One had thought that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had scratched its itch of targeting........

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