Talks that were meant to build trust between India and Pakistan threatened to create more animosity Friday as the mood soured the day after their foreign ministers met in Islamabad. Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and India's Minister of Foreign Affairs S.M. Krishna held talks Thursday in the third high-level contact between the countries during a six-month thaw in relations that were derailed by the 2008 Mumbai attacks. But Qureshi, after attacking India's home secretary in a tense final press conference between the ministers, also appeared to question Krishna's authority in comments to reporters Friday. “I did not leave the talks even once to discuss the progress by telephone,” he told reporters Friday. “But why did instructions keep coming in from New Delhi in the presence of the Indian foreign minister? “Who is the top foreign policy adviser for India?” Krishna called this an “extraodinary statement to make” as he arrived back at New Delhi airport and said he did not take calls from anyone during the negotiations. Efforts to improve the strained ties will fail if Islamabad does not act against terror emanating from its territory, he warned Friday. Krishna also said Pakistan should actively pursue new investigative leads and punish the perpetrators of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. Qureshi accused India of “narrowing down the talks” by focusing exclusively on militancy rather than the whole range of issues between the countries, including water and the status of the disputed region of Kashmir. “We wanted that our discussions should lead to a roadmap but Indians felt they did not have the mandate to commit to it,” Qureshi said. Even before talks got underway, comments from India's Home Secretary G.K. Pillai darkened the mood. He accused Pakistan's powerful intelligence agency of coordinating the Mumbai 2008 carnage that left 166 people dead. No to talks: BJP India's main opposition party, which has been opposed to the talks with Pakistan from the start, demanded the government break off the dialogue. “India should call off the talks now,” Sushma Swaraj, senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party, told the Times Now news channel. “The government should rethink. They should not engage in a dialogue if Pakistan continues this attitude.” Indian and Pakistani newspapers were also rife with mutual recrimination about the latest talks Friday. – Agencies “The trust-building dialogue ended in a deadlock as the two sides failed to come up with a clear roadmap for sustainable engagement or a consensus on confidence-building measures,” said Pakistan's most prestigious newspaper Dawn. The paper described discussions as very intense and blamed the deadlock on India refusing to discuss issues of concern to Pakistan. “It was obvious that the two sides had failed to agree on anything, even the confidence-building measures,” wrote The Hindustan Times newspaper in India. English-language tabloid Mail Today acknowledged Krishna's invitation to Qureshi but its page-three report was headlined: “Serious differences mar Indo
