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Indo-Pak dialogue to gain momentum in Islamabad next week | India and Pakistan are gearing up for back-to-back engagements. Foreign secretaries of both countries will be meeting in Islamabad on June 24 to prepare the ground
for next month's meeting between Foreign Ministers' SM Krishna and Shah Mahmood Qureshi. Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao's visit will be followed by a visit by
Indian Home Secretary G.K.Pillai who will be in the Pakistan capital to attend
the SAARC Home Secretaries meeting. This will be preceded by SAARC Home Ministers'
meeting, which will see Indian Home Minister P Chidambaram in attendance. Chidambaram
is also expected to hold one-to-one talks with the Pakistan leadership on June
26. Both India and Pakistan have acknowledged that a "trust deficit" exists between
the two countries, and, while chalking out the agenda for the July 15 Foreign
Ministers'meeting in Islamabad next week,Rao and her Pakistani counterpart Salman
Bashir are expected to put in place the measures to reduce this widening deficit.
In fact, the mood in New Delhi and Islamabad this time appears to be to work in
favor of a realistic and result-oriented dialogue to bridge the communication
and interactive gap tha exists between the two nuclear-armed neighbours. Speaking
exclusively to ANI at the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures
in Asia (CICA) conference in Istanbul last week, Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah
Mahmood Qureshi said: "The idea behind this (foreign ministers') meeting is to
bridge the trust deficit. We have to sit together and work out the confidence
building measures that would bridge the trust deficit." India on the other hand
strongly believes that to bridge the existing trust deficit, Pakistan has to shed
its insecurities. Speaking recently at the Afghanistan-India-Pakistan 'Trialogue'
organised by Delhi Policy Group, Rao said: "We sincerely desire peace with Pakistan.
We have to learn to live with the asymmetries in our sizes and capabilities. Such
differences of scale should not deter us from working with each other. Pakistan
should shed its insecurity on these counts." Despite literal inaction by Pakistan
on the ten dossiers provided by India against key suspects of the 26/11 Mumbai
terror carnage, the acquittal of JuD chief Hafeez Saeed by the courts and continued
operations of anti-India terror outfits like Jaish-e-Mohammad, Lashkar-e-Toiba
and Lashkar-E-jhangvi allegedly under the tutelage of Pakistani establishment
and its spy agency ISI, analysts believe that India is moving ahead boldly to
de-pause the composite dialogue process. New Delhi sees a perceptible change in
the tone and tenor of the Pakistan leadership and believes that the atmosphere
is ripe for talks to take place. Pakistan is eager to see a resumption of the
full-fledged composite dialogue, whereas, India is unwilling to get stuck in nomenclature
and hesitant about resuming the composite dialogue which was suspended in the
fifth round after the Mumbai terror strike in November 2008. Both India and Pakistan
have categorically said they will raise all issues of concern during their engagements
in June and July. India interestingly has acknowledged that significant progress
has been made in the composite dialogue process, especially on the complex Kashmir
issue. "Pakistan and India have to reaffirm the progress made during the composite
dialogue process between 2004 and 2008," Rao was quoted as saying recently. India
apparently is seeking "creative solutions" from Pakistan. Although terrorism would
be one of the main issues in the forthcoming talks between officials of the two
countries, it not be the only issue. Brief interactiosn have taken place between
the leaderships of the two countries since the 26/11 terror strike. Prime Ministers'
Manmohan Singh and Yousuf Raza Gilani have had meetings in the Egyptian seaside
resort of Sharm-el-Sheikh and in Bhutanese capital Thimphu. Dr. Singh has also
met Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg.
All of these meetings have focussed on ways to restart the composite dialogue
process. Therefore, the forthcoming foreign secretary-level talks should be seen
as the first step to bringing the composite dialogue back on track. |
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