NEW DELHI: India said on Monday it would take a decision on the next round of talks with Pakistan after the operations at the Pathankot airbase are over, amid reports that Delhi had handed some “actionable information” to Islamabad about the ongoing crisis.

Sources said there was a possibility of another round of NSA-level talks before the scheduled foreign secretaries meeting.

Press Trust of India said the government was weighing all options on the talks process with Pakistan and a “final call” was likely this week.

“I think let the operations get over and it is only then government takes a view on such matters,” Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Monday.

He was speaking to reporters after a meeting of the National Security Council, presided over by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, discussed the terror attack.

Reports claim India has given ‘leads’ to Pakistan about role of some groups in attack on airbase

Mr Jaitley was asked about the impact of the Pathankot attack on the proposed Indo-Pak talks.

Asked about the identity of the terrorists, he said: “I think we are at a stage where operations are still on (and) therefore it is not proper for me to say anything more than that.”

Mr Jaitley said combing operations took time as the base is a large complex with a 24km long circumference.

STANDOFF: Reports were confusing and varied. There were claims that five militants were killed while hunt was on for the body of a sixth fighter.

Security forces managed to confine the terrorists to a limited area and have been successful in containing any damage to the strategic assets at the air base, he said, adding the combing operations is taking long because there could be explosives.

Stating that security forces took prompt action, Mr Jaitley said the gunmen had come with the main objective of damaging strategic assets at Pathankot air base.

“These were well trained terrorists and part of suicide squad.

When such kind of Fidayeen attack takes place it has potential to cause huge damage. The complex is very big. The circumference of airbase is 24 kms therefore combing operations is also taking time,” he said.

Baqir Sajjad Syed adds from Islamabad: The government on Monday acknowledged that New Delhi had provided leads pointing towards possible involvement of a Pakistan-based militant group in the attack on India’s Pathankot airbase and that those were being probed.

“The government is in touch with the Indian government and is working on the leads provided by it,” the Foreign Office said in a statement.

It said that cooperation with India was in accordance with its “commitment to effectively counter and eradicate terrorism”.

The leads were shared by Indian National Security Adviser Ajit Doval with his Pakistani counterpart Lt Gen (retd) Nasser Janjua.

An informed source said India had shared telephone intercepts of the calls made by militants to their alleged handlers and the locations of the numbers which they had called in Pakistan.

The five attackers had made about a dozen calls to numbers in Pakistan since Friday afternoon, a source added.

India found out the Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) link from these calls. Half of the calls were said to be significantly long and provided substantial information about the attackers and their handlers.

India had alleged that terrorists belonging to Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Muhammad had carried out the attack on the airbase that started in the wee hours of Saturday. The operation to clear the airbase continued on the third day and it is feared that at least two terrorists were still holed up in a building in the complex.

Pakistan had soon after the start of the attack offered India its cooperation in dealing with terrorism.

FO reiterated the same on Monday as it said: “The challenge of terrorism calls for strengthening our resolve to a cooperative approach.”

Foreign secretaries of Pakistan and India are scheduled to meet later this month for discussing the modalities and time table for the meeting of different segments of the resumed dialogue process on outstanding issues in the relationship under the new tag of ‘Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue’.

The fate of the meeting is getting increasingly unclear. The dialogue was in trouble after the Pathankot attack, but the terrorist strike near Indian consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif (Afghanistan) made the prospects look even further bleak.

A Delhi based Indian source said that even if the talks were to go ahead, Delhi would insist at first discussing terrorism only.

Pakistan stressed on India not to discontinue the engagement the two started after their prime ministers’ meeting in Paris on November 30.

“Living in the same region and with a common history, the two countries should remain committed to a sustained dialogue process,” Foreign Office said.Ends

Published in Dawn, January 5th, 2016