Islamabad: The civil and military leadership is unanimous that Kashmir cannot be excluded from the agenda for any talks with India, officials said today.

This comes after India said it was ready to hold talks with Pakistan but only on the terms that were agreed between Prime Ministers Nawaz Sharif and Narendra Modi in Ufa.

At Ufa this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif had agreed to work together to rein in regional militancy, scheduling rare meetings between national security advisers and heads of border security.

The security talks between Pakistan and India scheduled for August 24 this year were called off after New Delhi opposed a planned meeting between Pakistani envoy in India and Kashmiri leaders. New Delhi insisted to discuss only terror issues.

India’s foreign ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said India was committed to Ufa understandings and if Pakistan was ready to talk accordingly “India is ready for it.”

Earlier today, Prime Minister’s Special Assistant on Foreign Affairs Tariq Fatemi said peace was essential for progress and prosperity in the region.

Yesterday Foreign Office Qazi Khalilullah said Pakistan was ready for talks with India but “pre-conditions are not acceptable.”

“We have insisted for negotiations on all issues including the core dispute of Jammu and Kashmir,” he added.

A foreign ministry official said Pakistan’s civil and military leadership were not ready to hold talks with India without Kashmir on the agenda.

“India wants to exclude Kashmir from the agenda to make Kashmir irrelevant. We can’t betray Kashmiris. No talks with India can be complete without Kashmir,” he said.

Another official said the Ufa meeting did not prohibit meeting with Kashmiris and New Delhi had unnecessarily raised the issue in August.

Last month Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in his address to the annual session of the United National General Assembly in New York proposed four point peace measures to defuse tension between the two South Asian countries.

The proposed measures included respect of 2003 ceasefire agreement by both Pakistan and India, no use of force under any circumstances, demilitarization of Kashmir and unconditional mutual withdrawal from Siachen Glacier.