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| Delhi, Islamabad difer with each other | | Peace process receives a big setback | | SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
NEW DELHI, JULY 17: Relations between India and Pakistan seem to have soured. Backchanel diplomatic moves are in place again, in an apparent bid to bring about a rapprochement betwen the two nuclear states and keep alive the peace process.
Taking the situation as it is, an imediate reconciliation is ruled out, India has postponed the talks with Pakistan, which were to be held this week. The move came after a series of bomb blasts rocked Mumbai on July 11 killing 200-odd people.
But if one thought that the much trumpeted peace process between India and Pakistan was off then better be corrected. “New Delhi never asserted that the peace process with Pakistan was actually being called off. The decision to defer secretary level talks has been formally communicated to Pakistan and the new dates for the talks meant to review the third round of composite dialogue process have not been proposed. The new dates will be decided later,” said Indian Foreign Secretary, Shyam Saran.
He, however, agreed that appalling incidents like Mumbai attacks do put a question mark on the peace initiative. “It is becoming difficult for India to take forward the process. Each time such incidents take place, we point out that our ability, like in any democracy, to take the peace process forward is dependent on public opinion,” he said.
The peace initiatives, which brought the people of the neighbouring countries together instilling extraordinary sense of ‘camaraderie’, if not diminishing the familiar Indo-Pak political rhetoric on Kashmir, would continue for all good measures. But not before Pakistan acts against terrorism. Islamabad will have to unmistakably translate words of ‘not allowing its soil to be used by terrorists against India’ into real actions.
It will have to start pulling apart the terrorist infrastructure thriving in areas of Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) that has been inimical to India’s interests, said Shyam Saran. Pakistan also has to put a full stop in ‘aiding and abetting’ terror groups on the name of jihad in Jammu and Kashmir that has enabled the localised aggression to escalate into a full-scale proxy war beyond the territories of Kashmir in various States across India, said Saran.
There is public pressure to take steps against perpetrators of terrorism whether those sitting across the border or their local support. While the Left parties want the talks with Pakistan to go ahead, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that had initiated the process under former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, wants the government to abandon.
New Delhi though claims of having ‘tangible evidences’ of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) involvement in Mumbai bombings, its expression of ‘zero tolerance’ against terrorism is believed to be aimed at pressurising Islamabad to act on its assurances.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s recent statement in Mumbai may have indicated that the peace process was being called off owing to Islamabad’s failure to turn off the alleged terror tap against India. But there is more to the process than mere political rhetoric and annoyance that is the result of Pakistan itself, points out noted defence analyst, C Uday Bhaskar.
Nonetheless, the peace process is surely taken a beating, post Mumbai; New Delhi is clear that the peace initiatives already undertaken with Islamabad like bus and train services etc. cannot be reversed. “The Indo-Pak talks can be abandoned, but how can the initiatives meant for persuading people-to-people contact be reversed?” questions foreign policy observers.
“The peace process is surely not derailed; the willingness is very much on. The ball is in Pakistan’s court and now it has to decide whether to continue acting on its assurances given to India to take forward the dialogue process. If war against terror has to be won, the terrorists in Pakistan have to be liquidated,” says noted analyst, K. Subrahmanyam.
Maj Gen (Retd) Afsir Karim, a former National Security Council Advisory Board member says: “Pakistan is sponsoring terrorism to wage a low intensity conflict against India as an instrument of its foreign policy. The most effective counter-terrorist efforts are ultimately those that create a backlash against terrorists and its perpetrators.”
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