Trevor Salmon: Rubbing salt into age-old wounds

The issue is really where David Cameron said this, which was of course in India. India has had a dispute with Pakistan for more than 50 years.

Pakistan is a sort of democracy, but it has also had military coups, assassinations and is not as stable as India.

Ultimately relations between the UK and Pakistan are going to be OK, but in the short-term this could lead to suspicion over the intelligence links between the two countries when it comes to defeating the Taleban. A lot of intelligence is based on trust and if someone says something like this one day, then there is likely to lead to problems the next day. We are seeing this now with some of the fall-out surrounding Mr Cameron's speech.

David Cameron's comments would be like the president of Pakistan coming to Dublin at the height of the Northern Ireland troubles and criticising the UK Government's policy over it. His comments were very much rubbing salt into the wounds and he really shouldn't have made them in India.

India and Pakistan are involved in a long standing conflict and it was quite surprising that Mr Cameron made this intervention, given what we know about the region.

Normally such speeches are made very carefully in order to avoid diplomatic rows and problems like this. It's not clear why this hasn't happened this time around, particularly when there was an imminent visit to the UK by the Pakistani president.

However, hopefully both sides will take a big breath and come to the view that their priority is to defeat the Taleban and that they need to get on with doing that.

David Cameron appeared to be on a charm offensive to India, viewing the country as a prize in terms of its growing economy and because or trade links to the UK. In the longer term economically that might be right, but militarily and strategically Pakistan is the prize in the here and now, as it's in Britain's interest to have the Taleban defeated.

So while in the short term this diplomatic row makes things difficult for both sides, it has to be hoped that there will be longer term view.

Trevor Salmon is a professor of international relations at the University of Aberdeen.