A day after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) stayed the execution of former Indian Navy officer Kulbhushan Jadhav, India signaled its wariness with Pakistan by stressing that asking for peace talks was an excuse for avoiding "real peace" and reflected a position that "may be hypocritical".

“When anyone asks for peace talks, it does not necessarily mean that the country is asking for peace. And one has to measure that difference very carefully,” Minister of State for External Affairs M J Akbar said on Friday evening while launching a pioneering journal on international affairs, titled “India and World”.

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“Do you want peace or do you want peace talks as an excuse for a position that may be hypocritical? And our reaction will be based on the larger assessment of what you mean,” said the minister, without naming Pakistan.

Akbar’s remarks can be seen as a veiled critique of Pakistan’s equivocation in asking for a dialogue with India without addressing the core issue of cross-border terrorism and acquire an added significance in view of speculation about a meeting between the Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan on the sidelines of the SCO summit in Astana in June.

Describing terrorism as the single most important threat to the world, the minister stressed that India would continue to fight and defeat terrorism and terrorists’ designs “to split pluralistic societies that have achieved internal cohesion and peace through suspicion and fear.”

Published by India Writes Network (www.indiawrites.org) and edited by Manish Chand, a foreign affairs analyst and author of “Journeys Across Continents: A New India on the Global Stage,” India and World seeks to present the country’s viewpoints on pressing international issues and debates amid shifting global equations and a mutating world order. The birth of a new publication on global affairs was a cause for celebration at a time when India’s engagement with the world was steadily expanding, said Mr Akbar.

Ahead of the third anniversary of the NDA government, the minister struck an upbeat note saying that in the last three years, with the impetus given by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India has expanded the horizon of its engagement vastly with the world and those parts of the world which were off the radar have been brought in.