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| All isn't bleak on India-Pak front | | MEN & MATTERS | |
B L KAK
Pakistan President, Gen. Parvez Musharraf, is keen on having a meeting with Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, next month. Gen. Musharraf cannot be expected to pick up his telephone to get into touch with Manmohan Singh in this connection. Instead, the Pak President has mandated his trusted Foreign Minister, Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri, to clear doubts and misgivngs that have, following the recent Mumbai bomb blasts and subsequent expulsions of each country's diplomats, cast a thick shadow over the India-Pakistan dialogue process.
Employing 'here-I-am' choice of operations, Kasuri began the job by holding a meeting with Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan, Shiv Shankar Menon. The 45-minute meeting between the two was held at the Pak Foreign Office. And the Pakistani media reported that Kasuri dispelled the notion that ceasefire on the Line of Control (LoC) andother Kashmir-related CBMs (confidence-buildiongmeasures) were under threat.
Signifcantly, after the meeting, Pakistan Foreign Minister sounded cautiously optimistic about the future of the Pakistan-India peace process and shrugged off the doomsday scenario being projected in the media. “I don’t agree with the reports being circulated by the doomsday brigade,” Kasuri said when his atention was drawn to a string of reports suggesting that all was bleak on the Pakistan-India front.
Terming the LoC ceasefire one of the "biggest" achievements under the confidence building between Pakistan and India, he saw no reason for it to be under threat. “Well, that’s not my impression. I don’t think at this point it is being feared.”He hastened to add: “I have not heard from anybody responsible in the two countries talking about undoing what has been done so far”.
Of course, desperate attempts were made by mediapersons in Islamabad to make Kasuri and Menon speak out on the issues that cropped up at their meeting. But little success on the part of Pakistani scribes as Kasuri refused to comment on his meeting with the Indian High Commissioner. Kasuri had apparently called Shiv Shankar Menon to get a sense of the direction of the dialogue process in the wake of India’s belligerent posturing towards Pakistan. However, he indirectly conveyed that India also seemed committed to it.
While conceding that the peace process was not easy, he underlined that it required patience and steadfastness. However, he expressed disappointment at the fact that while both the countries had moved ahead in confidence-building measures, there had been no movement on conflict resolution. He said that Pakistan understood that the Indian government had to put off the Foreign Secretary-level talks due to domestic political compulsions after the Mumbai blasts.
Kasuri obviously used his boss, Gen. Musharraf's language: “The government of Pakistan would like to carry this process forward but now the ball is in the Indian court as they have to give us the new dates for the talks. Kasuri was not off the mark when he emphasised that there was a large peace constituency in both the countries and the peace process enjoyed bipartisan political support on both sides.
Pakistan-watchers attach importance to Islamabad's restructured thinking over the recent sad development culminating in the tit-for-tat expulsions of Indian and Pakistani diplomats. This became pretty clear when the Pakistan Foreign Minister termed the development as "unfortunate". And Kasuri was of the view that it should not interfere with the peace process.
On the other hand, Shiv Shankar Menon sounded visibly irked by the media ringing alarm bells about the peace process that kicked off in February 2004. Menon saw no reason for the sudden panic over the Indo-Pakistan peace process and maintained that things had been blown out of proportion.
In a jibe at what he referred to as the industry of self-fulfilling prophecies, Menon was quoted by Pakistan's influential English daily, Dawn, as saying: “First, such euphoria was created and now this doomsday scenario. There’s need for some sense of proportion. The Indian High Commissioner failed to understand why the postponement of just one meeting had created such despondency and panic.”
“We both have leadership that sincerely wants the peace process to succeed,” he noted, dispelling the impression that there was a breakdown in the dialogue. However, he remained noncommittal on the question of when India was expected to give new dates of the Foreign Secretary-level talks, and left it at: “We’ll see.” Are things on India-Pakistan front as bleak as they appear? Menon's reported reply: “I’m always positive".
"There is always hope", pat came the reply from Menon when he was further questioned about the prospects of the peace dialogue.
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