LAHORE: The American pressure on India to resume the stalled peace
talks with Pakistan and New Delhi’s readiness to reduce troops in
Jammu & Kashmir has rekindled hopes in Islamabad that the
international forces would be making a serious attempt this time to
find out a permanent settlement to the lingering Kashmir dispute which
has always been a major influence on Pakistani domestic and foreign
policy.
Well placed diplomatic circles in Islamabad say the June 15, 2009 moot
between President Asif Zardari and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on
the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit could
only became possible due to the interest taken by the United States in
convincing the Indian leadership that the resumption of the stalled
composite dialogue is in the best interest of both India and Pakistan.
It was a meeting that lasted less than an hour, with a tense, photo-op
grip-and-grin on the sidelines of the Shanghai summit meeting.
However, being the first meeting between Indian Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Asif Zardari since the
terrorist attacks in Mumbai last year, the brief encounter was
freighted with expectations of a fresh opening between the countries.
Media reports say Asif Zardari flashed his customary broad grin for
the cameras, but Dr Manmohan Singh had only his usual tight smile and
terse words to offer. “I am happy to meet you, but my mandate is to
tell you that the territory of Pakistan must not be used for
terrorism,” Singh reportedly told Zardari when they met before the
meeting of Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Yet beneath the frosty
surface and well beyond the for-the-cameras pleasantries, a slow but
perceptible thaw between the countries has been taking place.
Subsequently, as a first step towards resumption of the peace process,
the two leaders reportedly agreed that their foreign secretaries would
meet on mutually convenient dates to be followed by another meeting of
the two leaders on the sidelines of the NAM (Non-Aligned Movement)
summit in July.
According to Shamshad Ahmad Khan, a former Pakistani diplomat who had
been involved in the Indo-Pak peace process, the Zardari-Manmohan
meeting has surely broken some ice between the two nuclear armed
neighbours, and it became possible only due to the US pressure. He
said the Pakistani establishment seems to have convinced Washington
about that fact that the normalization of the Indo-Pak ties and the
resolution of the Kashmir dispute was a pre-requisite to make the
ongoing war on terror a real success. He added that the Indian
government’s recent decision to phase out the presence of its troops
in Kashmir should also be seen in this perspective.
According to Ijaz Hussain, a seasoned Pakistani analyst and writer,
the US which has mostly played the role of a facilitator or a mediator
on Kashmir in the past, has for the first time assumed the role of an
initiator of “courageous or decisive action. “The explanation seems to
lie in Obama’s realisation that the US cannot win the war in
Afghanistan without Pakistan’s full and unstinted cooperation, which
it is reluctant to extend. This is due to the Pakistani perception
that India is using its consulates in Afghanistan to do mischief in
the Pak-Afghan tribal areas and Balochistan. Besides, it has built a
strategic road linking the Afghan road network with Iranian port of
Chahbahar. Consequently, Pakistan regards India as a greater threat to
its security than terrorism. In this perspective, the argument goes
that if Kashmir, which is the mother of all discord between the two
countries, is resolved Pakistan would extend full cooperation in
winning the war in Afghanistan”.
According to analyst Najam Sethi, the editor of Daily Times, what is
needed to resolve the Kashmir issue is a new dialogue, the old one
having run its course without bringing any change. He said the new
dialogue should be about sorting out the consequences of past
hostility, of policies that did not succeed but were insisted upon as
a kind of national emblem of pride. “It is only through a new dialogue
that India and Pakistan can take care of the allegation they level at
each other of interference. The two have tried to undermine each
other’s domestic scene on which they must exchange views frankly. The
entire world knows what they do to each other, and the verdict is that
such strategies have been robbed of all meaning and should now be
given up”.
Therefore, according to Najam Sethi, the old dialogue is not there to
resume. “New conditions dictate a new dialogue. Once assurances of
non-interference are exchanged and mutual fear of military attack is
removed, the non-core issues will be ready to resolve, and Pakistan
and India will be ready to talk sensibly about such more important
issues as waters. The “core issue”, as Pakistan’s policy on Kashmir
spells out, can be resolved only through peaceful means.
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