India, Pakistan talks tomorrow

After Mumbai hiatus:

INDIA: India and Pakistan will sit down tomorrow for their first official talks in more than a year, spurred on by global pressure to stabilise a relationship that bears heavily on the war in Afghanistan.

The meeting between the foreign secretaries of the two South Asian rivals ends a freeze on dialogue imposed by India after the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, which New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based militants.

Officially, India says it decided to resume talks after judging that Pakistan had taken some steps to address concerns about militant groups operating on its side of the border.

But a number of observers suggest the determining factor was external pressure, particularly from the United States, which wants a stable India-Pakistan relationship while it deploys tens of thousands more troops into battle against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

“Whether you call it pressure or friendly urging is a matter of opinion,” said former Indian Foreign Ministry official K.C. Singh, who headed an Indo-Pakistan counter-terror task force set up in 2006.

Pakistan had pushed Washington to help get a dialogue back on track, arguing that the perceived threat from India limited its ability to support the fight against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Whatever the motives, the mere fact that talks are on again has been welcomed by those who see engagement as the only course for the nuclear-armed neighbours, who have fought three wars against each other and are beset by a host of flashpoint disputes that have defied all attempts at resolution.

Former Indian Foreign Secretary Lalit Mansingh said dialogue provided a crucial “safety valve” for the periodic rise in tensions.

“The basic principle of diplomacy is to keep talking especially when you have a nuclear armed, unstable neighbour like Pakistan,” Mansingh said.

Former Pakistani InforMation minister Sherry Rehman, writing in India’s Hindu newspaper last week, said both sides understood the importance of the dialogue “ritual.”

“It breaks the ice, presages hope, promises substance and sets the stage for road maps and change,” she wrote.

The dialogue that was frozen after the Mumbai attacks had been launched in 2004 to cover the entire gamut of bilateral issues, from the bitter territorial dispute over Kashmir, to trade and counter-terrorism.

While it produced no dramatic breakthroughs, it was largely credited with a substantial drop-off in militant violence in Indian-controlled Kashmir and a surge in people-to-people contacts.

New Delhi, Tuesday, AFP