India prepared to discuss all outstanding issues with Pak: Nirupama Rao

India is prepared to "discuss all outstanding issues" with Pakistan, including Jammu and Kashmir but it has to take "ameliorative action" to eradicate terrorism against the country.

"The issue of Jammu & Kashmir comes up in our relationship with Pakistan and we've said very clearly, very confidently and very transparently that we are prepared to discuss all outstanding issues with Pakistan," India's foreign secretary Nirupama Rao said here yesterday.

Asserting that India's relationship with Pakistan has been "complicated" due to terrorism, Rao said "terror groups implacably opposed to India continue to recruit, train and plot attacks from safe havens across our borders" and stressed "the need for Pakistan to take ameliorative action to eradicate terrorism against India."

The foreign secretary made these comments just before a likely meeting between the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan on the sidelines of the forthcoming UN general assembly's annual meeting in New York.

"Despite this threat, we understand well the Kautilyan advice that a great power loses stature if it remains bogged down in  neighbourhood entanglements," the foreign secretary said while delivering a lecture at Harvard University. 

Rao said India wants to create an  economic environment with its neighbours since a peaceful neighbourhood is mandatory for the "realisation of our own vision of economic growth."

Rao added that India wants to "persevere in our dialogue with Pakistan. It is not about segmenting this dialogue or taking away the complicated issues from it saying we are not ready to discuss it.

That is certainly not our approach. We want to discuss all the outstanding issues and that will also include the issue of Jammu and Kashmir."

The top diplomat, who was in Washington earlier to discuss President Barack Obama's upcoming India visit in November, stressed that Kashmir is an internal matter as far as India is concerned. 

"It is an internal affair because it (Kashmir) is an integral part of India." 

She said India is "determined to persevere in our dialogue with Pakistan to resolve outstanding issues so that our region will be stable and so that  the rationale of economic development in an atmosphere of peace, for all of South Asia, remains our steadfast goal."

Later referring to the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, Rao told PTI it's an issue that is very much a part of what "we want to speak to Pakistan about. On Mumbai, closure is needed."

She said Pakistan's interior minister Rehman Malik is in touch with the Indian Home Ministry about the 26/11 trial. 

"The trial has moved slowly. There has not been much progress to show out of it."

However, India's vision of an enhanced South Asian cooperation for development is challenged by violent extremism and terrorism which originates in "our region and finds sustenance and sanctuary there," Rao added.

Pointing out that the threat from terrorism cannot be dealt with through national efforts alone, Rao said it is time the international community "works towards early adoption of a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism that was tabled at the UN over a decade ago."

On Afghanistan, Rao said India is "supportive" of the US efforts to fight terrorism and bring stability in the war-ravaged country.

"We have a direct interest in Afghanistan, not because we see it as a theatre of rivalry with Pakistan but because of the growing fusion of terrorist  groups that operate from Afghanistan and Pakistan and their activities in India," she added.

India's $1.3 billion assistance to Afghanistan has helped build vital civil infrastructure and develop human resources and capacity in areas of education, health, agriculture and rural development.

Rao said India will stand by this commitment despite the grave threat under which its personnel and people work in Afghanistan.