Pakistan News And Discussion-9

[Naresh]

[center]<b><span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>Indo-Pak talks should follow incremental approach to normalisation</span></b>[/center]

The Indian foreign secretary, Shivshankar Menon, and his Pakistani counterpart, Riaz Mohammad Khan, are going to resume the stalled Indo-Pak dialogue today. But despite some hopefulness, few expect the meeting to yield quick dividends. The past is a dark precedent as far as the foreign secretaries are concerned. Not long ago they used to meet only to get an opportunity to boost their careers by issuing hard-line, negative statements just after the meeting. What’s the use of meeting if this is the motive – grandstanding stubbornness not to ‘give in to the enemy’ to placate the hawks at home?

The Indian foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, who used to be an economic expert but is hawkish these days, thinks he is duty-bound to recall the train bombing that killed 186 innocent Indians after which India refused to talk to Pakistan despite its loud protestations of innocence and demand for concrete proof. Indeed, how can anyone take India’s accusations seriously when an unclaimed body found inside a train compartment is dubbed ‘Lahori’ and Pakistan is asked to ‘take it back’? Meanwhile, Pakistan says it also has proof of the ‘foreign hand’ that is causing destruction in Balochistan, and everyone knows who Pakistan means by that.

India says Pakistan is still sending terrorists into Held Kashmir. Pakistan denies the charge. It says terrorism is bothering Pakistan too and evidence from the recent past says terrorists who infiltrate into Kashmir could also be trying to kill President Musharraf. The Pakistani leader has named people in his recent book who relate to at least one Pakistani group that attacked the Indian parliament in 2001, causing a dangerous standoff between the armies of the two countries. Thus the two states are locked in a campaign of mutual vilification while the important agenda of normalisation and bilateral trade awaits fulfilment in line with the pledges made earlier.

<b>Pakistan’s government is under pressure domestically because its support base is fast evaporating. So if the foreign secretaries are primed once again to meet in a familiar deadlock-making pantomime, they should think of not meeting at all. The lobbies they are trying to please are no longer meeting their national imperatives and are blind to what the future holds for the two states if they can’t agree to behave normally. <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>Unfortunately, Pakistan has placed itself in a situation where it can’t force India to ‘treat it equally’ <!--emo&:flush--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/Flush.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='Flush.gif' /><!--endemo--> and make corresponding concessions and show movement on the issue of Kashmir.</span>

The reality – which the world recognises much better than Pakistan – is that Pakistan has few good cards to play vis-à-vis a ‘status quo’ <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>India that has proved that it can do without responding to Pakistani overtures.</span></b> The great seduction of bilateral trade and transit facilities across Pakistan has also faded, and the repeated ‘linking’ of trade with Kashmir made by Pakistan impresses no one, not even the Punjabi business component of the establishment. Given this situation, why can’t Pakistan go forward on trade, start talking seriously about a bilateral treaty liberalising cross-border exchange of commodities, even while Kashmir remains unresolved? Kashmir will hang fire in any case whether Pakistan changes tack or not.

There was promise in the thinking of the Pakistani Prime Minister, Shaukat Aziz, when he carefully de-linked the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline from Kashmir. Why can’t he do it in the case of cross-border trade? Pakistan and India are unable to satisfy each other’s claims and complaints that spring from a state of distrust and non-normalisation. Why not leave the intractable political problems as they are and move forward on things that can be done? The people of Pakistan and India will surely not oppose such a trimming of strategy. But as things stand, the bilateral equation could go from bad to worse if the trouble in Kashmir continues and Balochistan simmers in return.

The two foreign secretaries will talk about terrorism that is bothering both the countries. The last time President Musharraf and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met it was decided to set up some kind of mechanism to halt terrorism. The two gentlemen can talk about the mechanism but <b>not much may come out of it if Pakistan is increasingly unable to stop any kind of terrorism either directed at Afghanistan or India. <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>Something more meaningful and new has to be done and Pakistan has to take the lead in this, and that too unilaterally. That is what looks possible and advisable.</span></b>

Cheers <!--emo&:beer--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/cheers.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='cheers.gif' /><!--endemo-->