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| Islamabad crosses all the lines: Talks with Pak now means Indian insult | | | RUSTAM
JAMMU, Feb 9: When New Delhi suddenly surprised everyone in India by announcing last week that it is willing to resume talks with Islamabad, as also by suggesting dates (February 18 or February 25) for the meeting between the Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupma Roy and her Pakistani counterpart Salman Bashir, it was hoped that Pakistan would reciprocate the change of heart on the part of New Delhi and adopt a constructive approach towards the issues facing the two countries.
It was imperative on the part of Islamabad to give up belligerency and start with a clean slate in view of the sudden climb down by New Delhi. It was a climb down from its stated position that though New Delhi was a party to the July 2009 lop-sided and virtually Pakistan-centric Sharm-el-Sheikh India-Pakistan joint-statement, it will “resume dialogue process with Pakistan after it dismantles terrorist-related infrastructure in its soil” and “makes a solemn commitment that Islamabad will not allow the repeat of 26/11-like Mumbai terrorist attacks”, which took away more than 170 innocent lives, including the lives of a few Americans and Israelis.
That the Sharm-el-Sheikh was a badly formulated statement from the Indian point of view was admitted by none other than by the then Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon, presently National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister, who told more than one hundred members of the Parliament immediately after July 16-17, 2009, that the “Sharm-el-Sheikh Joint-statement was badly drafted”. The case in point was the suggestion that the composite dialogue and terrorism were two different things and the inclusion of a reference in the statement to the involvement of India in the subversive activities in Pakistan’s Baluchistan – controversial suggestions that created a sort of commotion in the country and made Prime Minister Mnmohan Singh to tell the Parliament that his government would resume the dialogue process with Pakistan only if it addressed the Indian concerns in a decisive manner.
Has Islamabad reciprocated the Indian generosity? The answer is a big NO. Instead, Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmud Qureshi ridiculed, humiliated and insulted New Delhi, nay the entire Indian nation, on Sunday by making highly provocative statements in his home town, Multan. His statement, coupled with taunts, read: “India, which disrupted the process of composite dialogue with Pakistan and which threatened to sever its relations with Pakistan (after the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attacks), wants to resume the dialogue process with Islamabad. We have not buckled under the Indian pressure. We have not yielded before the Indian stand. Our position on Kashmir and the Indus waters is very strong”.
What he said could be legitimately described as a provocative act of Pakistan. The Indian Foreign Office has, of course, taken an exception to the Pakistani Foreign Minister’s highly provocative, rather highly insulting statements but, as was expected, those looking after the country’s crucial foreign affairs have again displayed this chicken-heartedness and not responded in the fashion they should have considering the nature of the provocation coming from none other source than the Pakistani Foreign Office. The Indian Foreign Office has simply taken cognizance of the Pakistani Foreign Minister statements and indicated that it would take up these Pakistani taunts and statements “at an appropriate time”.
The Indian Foreign Office has also tried to give the outraged Indian nation to understand that what the Pakistan Foreign Minister said at Multan was “an attempt at sabotaging the peace talks”. In other words, the Indian Foreign Office is not very upset over what the Pakistani Foreign Minister said; it is upset because what he has said can derail the peace process.
It was not expected of the Indian Foreign Office. What was expected of it was to administer a snub to the Pakistani political establishment controlled by the hawkish President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Reza Gilani and tell them in clear terms that India has decided to give up the idea of resumption of talks with Islamabad and that the responsibility for all this lies with the Pakistani aggressive and unscrupulous authorities. By not taking this line, the Indian Foreign Office has undoubtedly, brought a bad name to the country.
There is still time for the Indian Foreign Office and the Congress party to redesign their strategy taking into consideration the country’s paramount sovereign interests. Not to do so would be only to insult themselves and the Indian nation and let the ruthless, unreasonable, unprincipled and aggressor Pakistan to go scot-free and enable it to despise India and the Indian nation. Diplomatic nuances require the Indian Foreign Office to Pay Islamabad in its own coin remembering the fact that it represents the liberal, but mighty and self-respecting, Indian nation.
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