Ahead of the foreign secretary-level talks, Pakistan has said it is open to "any sensible suggestion" from India, but cautioned against any "impossible" or "unreasonable" demands under the joint anti-terror mechanism as it would make the initiative irrelevant.
Stating that "terrorists have no religion" and "no value system anywhere in the world can justify their acts", Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri warned that "blame-game" by the two countries can "kill" the joint mechanism.
Kasuri said the most important factor to enable the mechanism to work was to "try and reduce the trust deficit which exists" and that was the job of "experts" who will be interacting with each other.
"Pakistan is open to any sensible suggestion coming from India," he told Outlook magazine in an interview in Islamabad.
"This anti-terror mechanism will only work if the two sides don't make impossible demands on each other. If impossible demands are made, then we will reduce this mechanism (to a platform) for scoring points," Kasuri said.
Sounding hopeful over success of the mechanism, he said, "My appeal is, please don't make any unreasonable demands on us, just to show us down, rather than eliciting cooperation."
He said both countries must realise that the other country has its own "sensitivities" and "once this is accepted, the process can take the first initial step."
