Pakistan FM urges India not to get ’sucked’ into blame game

Pakistan’s foreign minister appealed Friday to India not to get “sucked” into a blame game over the Mumbai attacks and put the nuclear-armed neighbours on the path to confrontation.

Speaking in New Delhi, where he was on an official visit, Shah Mehmood Qureshi condemned the multiple Islamist assaults on India’s financial capital, calling the militants “barbaric animals.”

But he said India had spoken too swiftly earlier on Friday in blaming “elements in Pakistan” for the attacks and should avoid a “knee-jerk” response over the attacks that killed at least 130 people.

“My honest view is the government should have reflected more in coming to its conclusions,” Qureshi told a gathering of female journalists.

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“Let us build a new relationship or we could get sucked back into a situation that we have been living in for 60 years and that will be a tragedy as large as this one,” he said.

India-Pakistan relations during that period have been marked by three wars, frequent border clashes and an intense arms race. The countries came to the brink of another war in 2002 after a raid on parliament in New Delhi, an assault India blamed on Pakistan-based militants.

“We should avoid a replay of that beaten track of the blame game,” said Qureshi.

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