23 AUGUST 2015: unfortunately NSA talks cancelled

Ø  The curtains came down by Saturday night on the dramatic spectacle around holding India-Pakistan talks, less than a day before Pakistan’s National Security Adviser Sartaj Aziz was due to land in New Delhi, with bitter accusations and acrimony marking the exchanges. Pakistan accused India of “concocting terror incidents and keeping the LoC [Line of Control] hot”, while India said Pakistan was using firing at the LoC and terror attacks to “run away from the talks”. If on Friday, the two nations sparred by exchanging media statements, on Saturday, they sparred at press conferences addressed by Mr. Aziz in Islamabad, followed by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj in Delhi. The deadlock over the talks, due to be held between Mr. Aziz and India’s NSA Ajit Doval from 10 a.m. on Monday morning at Hyderabad House here, remained the same, however. While India said Mr. Aziz could not meet Kashmiri separatist Hurriyat leaders during his visit, and would have to restrict the agenda to issues of terrorism, Pakistan said it would accept no conditions and would have an “open agenda”.

Ø  The former Israeli Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, revealed new details to his biographers about how close Israel came to striking Iran’s military facilities in 2010, 2011 and 2012 and why it did not despite his and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s desire to do so, according to interview excerpts aired on Israeli television on Friday night. Barak, who also previously served as Israel’s Prime Minister, said that he and Netanyahu were ready to attack Iran each year but that in 2010, the military chief of staff said Israel lacked the “operational capability”; in 2011, two key ministers waffled at the last minute; and in 2012, the timing did not work out because of a joint U.S.-Israel military exercise and visit by the American Defence Secretary. He noted that the two Ministers who balked in 2011, Moshe Yaalon and Yuval Steinitz, “are the most militant about attacking Iran” today. The interview excerpts were aired by Israel’s Channel 2, which stressed that Barak had sought to prevent them from being broadcast, but that they had been approved by Israel’s military censor. Reached late Friday by telephone, Barak confirmed that the recordings were authentic but said he had provided the information on background to the authors, Ilan Kfir and Danny Dor, whose book, Barak: The Wars of My Life, came out this week in Hebrew.