India and Pakistan must write their own script and should not play into the hands of anyone, External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid has said as he pitched for a “direct” dialogue between the two countries to sort out differences.

Khurshid, who is here to attend the UN General Assembly’s annual session, termed yesterday’s terror strikes in Jammu as extremely unfortunate, but said the two countries must find ways to address issues like this.

“It is extremely unfortunate...but I think we must look at it in terms of people who don’t want things to move forward,” Khurshid told PTI yesterday.

“There are forces obviously that don’t want things to move forward between India and Pakistan, I think we have to factor this in. At the same time, the responsibility, obviously and ultimately, must rest with the civilian government (in Pakistan),” he said.

“I expect they will and they must find ways of addressing this,” Khurshid said, adding that Prime Ministers of the two countries must meet and write their own script.

“We shouldn’t play into the hands of anyone. Let us do things on our own, according to our best understanding of national interest and then what more needs to be done, once the meeting is over, we will analyse it.

“If we were to play into the hands of somebody who writes the script then we are finished. We must write our own script. Let the two Prime ministers work on a script and let’s see what that script is. We have enough time to talk about it,” he said.

Reacting to the Opposition demand that Singh should call off the meeting with his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif in New York, Khurshid said: “If you want to tell somebody you are unhappy about what has happened you still have to tell them.

“The Opposition is not going to carry messages for us. We must directly say what we have to say ourselves.

“If we are here at the UN and we are talking to everybody about everything, it seems strange that the most important message we want to give to somebody, we, for some reasons, become reluctant to give that message,” he said.

When asked whether India will convey a stern message to Pakistan during Prime Minister’s meeting with Sharif, Khurshid said: “I am sure we will do what is in the best interest of our country.”

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