11-17-2006, 03:54 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Diplomatic rout </b>
The Pioneer Edit Desk
Pak won Delhi round hands down
Nobody seriously expected the Foreign Secretary level talks between India and Pakistan, which concluded in New Delhi last Wednesday, to achieve any significant breakthrough. Quite unnecessarily, Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri generated a media hype by suggesting that a solution on Siachen would be reached "in days", thereby fomenting speculation that the New Delhi parleys could lead to some concrete results at least on that front. Predictably, that did not happen. Like every other issue in dispute between the two countries, the Siachen imbroglio remains intractable largely due to Pakistan's intransigent refusal to demarcate the Actual Ground Position Line. Pakistan, however, must be given full credit for turning the tables on India on a host of issues in the course of the deliberations. If he still has not done so, it is high time Prime Minister Manmohan Singh starts to regret falling into General Pervez Musharraf's trap by conceding a Joint Anti-terror Mechanism during their recent talks on the sidelines of the NAM Summit at Havana. Islamabad has exploited the idea to the hilt. First, it successfully wangled "co-victim of terror" status from New Delhi, thus nullifying years of painstaking effort to prove to the rest of the world that Pakistan is an unrepentant promoter of cross-border terror and global jihad. <b>Now that India acknowledges Pakistan's victimhood, our claim of ISI having a hand in most terrorist depredations in this country has begun to sound hollow. Second, Pakistan has scored a huge diplomatic victory by clubbing the disturbances in Balochistan with terrorist strikes in India. At one stroke, it has succeeded in virtually justifying its army's pogrom in that disturbed province, including the mass killing of the Bugti clan last September. By asserting it will present evidence of Indian complicity in instigating Baloch dissidents, Islamabad hopes to cover up its active support for insurgency in Jammu & Kashmir and other perfidious acts on our soil.</b>
New Delhi has only itself to blame for this denouement. It will be extremely difficult for India to extricate itself from a situation where it is being equated with Islamabad as a promoter of terrorism. The so-called Joint Mechanism is a non-starter, with Pakistan expectedly pooh-poohing the evidence placed on the table by India. Besides, Pakistan Foreign Secretary Riaz Mohammad Khan's assertion that no country can gather proof of another country's involvement within 15 minutes of a terrorist outrage (as India claimed in the aftermath of the Mumbai train blasts of July 7) would appear quite logical to the international community. Our position has been weakened further by the inability to produce irrefutable evidence of Pakistan's role in the Mumbai and Malegaon incidents. Hiding behind the technicality of chargesheets not yet being filed by the local investigators cannot undo the damage to the credibility of our claims. Given Islamabad's overwhelming superiority over New Delhi in the propaganda department, it is obvious that we have been put on the backfoot. Knowing that such a scenario was inevitable, there is good reason to ask why the Government decided to resume Foreign Secretary level talks, unilaterally suspended by us in the wake of the Mumbai outrage. Arguably, it is advisable to keep Pakistan engaged in dialogue irrespective of immediate results. <b>But that does not mean we should create conditions in which only self-goals can be scored</b>. A probable pat on the back from Uncle Sam cannot be reason enough for inviting diplomatic rout.
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The Pioneer Edit Desk
Pak won Delhi round hands down
Nobody seriously expected the Foreign Secretary level talks between India and Pakistan, which concluded in New Delhi last Wednesday, to achieve any significant breakthrough. Quite unnecessarily, Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri generated a media hype by suggesting that a solution on Siachen would be reached "in days", thereby fomenting speculation that the New Delhi parleys could lead to some concrete results at least on that front. Predictably, that did not happen. Like every other issue in dispute between the two countries, the Siachen imbroglio remains intractable largely due to Pakistan's intransigent refusal to demarcate the Actual Ground Position Line. Pakistan, however, must be given full credit for turning the tables on India on a host of issues in the course of the deliberations. If he still has not done so, it is high time Prime Minister Manmohan Singh starts to regret falling into General Pervez Musharraf's trap by conceding a Joint Anti-terror Mechanism during their recent talks on the sidelines of the NAM Summit at Havana. Islamabad has exploited the idea to the hilt. First, it successfully wangled "co-victim of terror" status from New Delhi, thus nullifying years of painstaking effort to prove to the rest of the world that Pakistan is an unrepentant promoter of cross-border terror and global jihad. <b>Now that India acknowledges Pakistan's victimhood, our claim of ISI having a hand in most terrorist depredations in this country has begun to sound hollow. Second, Pakistan has scored a huge diplomatic victory by clubbing the disturbances in Balochistan with terrorist strikes in India. At one stroke, it has succeeded in virtually justifying its army's pogrom in that disturbed province, including the mass killing of the Bugti clan last September. By asserting it will present evidence of Indian complicity in instigating Baloch dissidents, Islamabad hopes to cover up its active support for insurgency in Jammu & Kashmir and other perfidious acts on our soil.</b>
New Delhi has only itself to blame for this denouement. It will be extremely difficult for India to extricate itself from a situation where it is being equated with Islamabad as a promoter of terrorism. The so-called Joint Mechanism is a non-starter, with Pakistan expectedly pooh-poohing the evidence placed on the table by India. Besides, Pakistan Foreign Secretary Riaz Mohammad Khan's assertion that no country can gather proof of another country's involvement within 15 minutes of a terrorist outrage (as India claimed in the aftermath of the Mumbai train blasts of July 7) would appear quite logical to the international community. Our position has been weakened further by the inability to produce irrefutable evidence of Pakistan's role in the Mumbai and Malegaon incidents. Hiding behind the technicality of chargesheets not yet being filed by the local investigators cannot undo the damage to the credibility of our claims. Given Islamabad's overwhelming superiority over New Delhi in the propaganda department, it is obvious that we have been put on the backfoot. Knowing that such a scenario was inevitable, there is good reason to ask why the Government decided to resume Foreign Secretary level talks, unilaterally suspended by us in the wake of the Mumbai outrage. Arguably, it is advisable to keep Pakistan engaged in dialogue irrespective of immediate results. <b>But that does not mean we should create conditions in which only self-goals can be scored</b>. A probable pat on the back from Uncle Sam cannot be reason enough for inviting diplomatic rout.
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