EAM Jaishankar says IWT in abeyance till terror stops, after Pakistan seeks talks on water pact

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India will not lift its suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) with Pakistan until it addresses cross-border terrorism, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on May 15, a day after Pakistan - through a letter - conveyed its willingness to restart talks over the river water pact.

"The Indus Waters Treaty is held in abeyance and will continue to be held in abeyance until the cross-border terrorism by Pakistan is credibly and irrevocably stopped... The only thing which remains to be discussed on Kashmir is the vacating of illegally occupied Indian territory in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir; we are open to that discussion," Jaishankar told reporters in New Delhi.

Pakistan, in a letter reportedly sent a week ago, appealed to India to reconsider its decision on the IWT citing the dependence of millions of people on the waters, which has been regulated by the 1960 treaty.

The letter was sent by the secretary of Pakistan's Ministry of Water Resources, Syed Ali Murtaza, to India’s Jal Shakti Ministry Secretary Debashree Mukherjee. According to reports, the tone of Murtaza's letter, which arrived during Operation Sindoor, was not completely placatory, with Pakistan calling India's decision 'unilateral and illegal' and 'equivalent to an attack on the people of Pakistan and its economy'.

Addressing the nation for the first time since Operation Sindoor, Prime Minister Modi on May 12 made it clear that India will not hold talks with Pakistan on Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) until the neighbouring country takes action on terrorists and the terror infrastructure on its soil.

"Paani aur khoon ek saath nhi beh sakta (Water and blood cannot flow together)," PM Modi had said in his address.

India had on April 23 put the Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan in abeyance, as part of a series of diplomatic measures, after 26 civilians were killed in a terror attack in Jammu Kashmir’s Pahalgam on April 22. The move was unprecedented, as India never touched the treaty even during major conflicts with Pakistan in the past.

The Indus Waters Treaty, mediated by the World Bank in 1960, regulates the division of water from the Indus River and its tributaries between India and Pakistan.

As per the treaty, India was allowed unrestricted use of all the water of the "eastern rivers" of the Indus system—Sutlej, Beas and Ravi. Pakistan, meanwhile, was allowed to receive water from the "western rivers"— Indus, Jhelum and Chenab.

India has six operational hydroelectric projects in Jammu and Kashmir through which it has resorted to fluctuations in the river flow of the western rivers since April 23.