Pakistan to send envoy Sohail Mahmood back to India

In what suggests Islamabad’s desire to de-escalate tensions with India, Pakistan has decided to send its High Commissioner Sohail Mahmood back to New Delhi and resume work, reports The Statesman. 

This was conveyed to the Indian Deputy High Commissioner in Pakistan on Tuesday evening after he was called to the foreign office in Islamabad by a senior Pakistan official.

Pakistan had called its envoy back to Islamabad for urgent consultations in the wake of the Pulwama terror attack. Islamabad took the step after India called back its envoy Ajay Bisaria to New Delhi.

Pakistan also announced that its delegation would visit New Delhi as scheduled on 14 March followed by the return of an Indian delegation to Islamabad for discussions on the draft agreement on Kartarpur Sahib Corridor.

Pakistan said it was also committed to continuing weekly contact with India at the DGMO level to review the border situation.

On 15 February, a day after the Pulwama attack in which over 40 CRPF troopers were killed, Sohail Mahmood was summoned by Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale, who lodged strong protest over the suicide bombing by Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed.

More than 2500 CRPF personnel, many of them returning from leave to rejoin duty in the Valley, were travelling in a convoy of 78 vehicles when they were ambushed on the Srinagar-Jammu highway at Latoomode in Awantipora in Pulwama district of South Kashmir around 3.15 pm on 14 February.

The suicide bomber was identified as 19-year-old Adil Ahmed Dar, who officials said had joined the terror outfit in 2018.

Among the first steps that New Delhi had initiated against Islamabad following the terror attack was withdrawal of the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status granted to Pakistan in 1996.