India’s executive has moved with speed to create the Pakistan season. But it is far from evident what the nuts and bolts are for the scaffolding of happy ties to be built. Within weeks of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh deciding —
in spite of misgivings at home — to break the ice with Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani at Thimphu, the foreign secretary visited Islamabad last week, and home minister P. Chidambaram seized the occasion of the Saarc interior ministers’ conference in the Pakistan capital to hold a bilateral with his host country counterpart, Mr Rehman Malik, last Saturday. On July 15, the foreign ministers of the two countries are slated to meet in Islamabad. But do we know where we are headed?
The express purpose of last week’s meetings in Islamabad was to negate or narrow the “trust deficit”, which the principals acknowledged exists between their countries. This year’s first meeting between the foreign secretaries — held in New Delhi on February 26 after an uncomfortable hiatus — produced acerbic sound-bites because India demanded progress on punishing the perpetrators of the Mumbai terror attacks, but the Indian Prime Minister did not allow the discouraging notes to come in the way of efforts to establish goodwill. The June 24 interaction — a necessary follow-up — has been officially described as a “good essay in mutual comprehension”. Unless this leads to some give on Pakistan’s part on the issue of dealing with the Mumbai attack masterminds in a manner that assuages public opinion in India, we may end up with a dialogue process that is adrift. Mr Chidambaram told reporters in Islamabad that his discussion with Mr Malik was positive, and forward movement in the Mumbai case was promised. He was not slow to point out, however, that outcomes will determine progress, not expression of intent. If Pakistan reciprocates Prime Minister Singh’s enthusiasm for peace and takes some concrete steps to punish the 26/11 guilty in the fortnight before the foreign ministers are to meet, the July 15 contact can be a harbinger for a full-fledged dialogue to get underway and milestones to be crossed.
The foreign secretaries indicated that the two sides were likely to pay attention to the “doables” in the run-up to the meeting of their foreign ministers. This is cautious and timid and cannot conceivably be grounds for the resumption of the composite dialogue stalled after the Mumbai terror attacks by Pakistan nationals who are coddled by sections of the establishment. Seen from the Indian perspective, it is hard to point to a “doable” in the absence of visible action against the dangerous men behind the 26/11 assault. If the government proceeds in that direction, the question will be asked why it had interrupted the composite dialogue in the first place. At their joint press conference, the two foreign secretaries were hard put to say how the shock of another Mumbai-style attack can be absorbed. It has been a refrain in Pakistan that India should not focus on the brutality perpetrated on Mumbai by Pakistani civilian commandos, and address the whole range of issues that lie between the two countries. Mr Chidambaram answered this in Islamabad when he said that it wasn’t “myopic” to pay attention to the 26/11 attacks as the episode had the effect of rupturing ties between the two countries.
Even when times are hard, it doesn’t take much to change the atmospherics between India and Pakistan. This is a tribute to the intrinsic closeness that the peoples of the two countries share. Islamabad should learn to respect this. On the terrorism issue, if it is as solicitous of India as it is of China in addressing the latter’s concern in respect of Xinjiang, there can be a world to win.