Indian policemen stand guard outside the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi on Monday.
AFP/New Delhi
India on Monday cancelled talks with Pakistan scheduled for later this month, in an angry reaction to a meeting between Pakistan's high commissioner and Kashmiri separatists.
The foreign ministry said Monday's meeting between the Pakistani envoy and separatist leaders in Indian-administered Kashmir had undermined efforts by the new Indian government to engage with Islamabad.
"I can confirm the foreign secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan have been called off," foreign ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin told AFP.
Akbaruddin later told reporters that the high commissioner's meeting with separatist leaders "undermines the constructive diplomatic engagement initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his first day in office".
Relations between the two neighbours broke down after attacks by Pakistani gunmen on India's commercial hub Mumbai in 2008 in which 166 people were killed.
But Modi's surprise move to invite his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif to his swearing-in ceremony in May spurred hopes that peace talks between the two countries could resume.
Last month, the two countries scheduled talks between Indian Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh and her Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry for August 25.
Pakistan said that India's decision to cancel talks was a setback in efforts to improve relations between the two countries.
"The Indian decision is a setback to the efforts by our leadership to promote good neighbourly relations with India," the Pakistani foreign office said in a statement in Islamabad.
The unresolved territorial dispute over Kashmir in the Himalayan region has for decades been a major source of tension between the two neighbours, who have fought three wars since partition in 1947.
The high commissioner's provocative move to meet with separatists comes at a time of political turmoil in Pakistan, where opposition leader Imran Khan has called for mass civil disobedience to unseat the government.
Khan, the former cricket star who leads the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) party, has led thousands of supporters from the eastern city of Lahore to rally in Islamabad to demand that the government resign.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan has experienced three military coups and the latest crisis has triggered more speculation about possible intervention by the powerful armed forces.
Last week there were also heightened tensions in Kashmir, where India and Pakistan have traded accusations of ceasefire violations.
Kashmir is divided between Indian and Pakistan by a de-facto border known as the Line of Control (LoC) and controlled separately by the South Asian rivals.
