Of India - Pakistan ties

“India-Pakistan relations is off life-support. It’s breathing on its own now.” This observation by government sources here captures the essence of the achievement of completing an entire A-Z round of talks between the two countries. The modest deliverables of LoC trade and travel between the two Kashmirs should not be the focus. Instead, it is significant that since the resumption of dialogue, two terror attacks in India — Pune on February 13, 2010 and Mumbai on July 13, 2011— did not derail the talks. On both occasions, India played a more mature game of not instantly assigning blame to Pakistan, which went a long way in smoothing the path between the two countries. Pakistan achieved a key tactical objective in its relations with India. The delinking of dialogue and terror attacks is almost complete, though the jury is still out on what India will do if a really big terror attack comes out of Pakistan-sponsored groups. This delinking was the core promise of the 2009 Sharm el-Sheikh joint statement which was overwhelmingly rejected by India then. Two years down the line, most of India is resigned to the fact that not talking to Pakistan does not mean less terror attacks. On India’s part, the emphasis on confidence-building measures and people-to-people contact has prevailed. The visa regime is likely to be eased. Under the SAARC rubric, categories A and B will be exempted from visas throughout South Asia, including India and Pakistan. Pakistan is also likely to move to a negative list trade regime with India by October 2011, from the restrictive and mindless positive regime at present. That’s MFN by a different name, said government officials “but will smell just as sweet”. Hina Rabbani Khar’s meeting with the Hurriyat was a nod to the power-brokers in Rawalpindi. It was avoidable and foreign minister S M Krishna did not mince his words about it. Commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma has invited his Pakistani counterpart Makhdoom Amin Fahim for talks in September to improve trade ties between the two nations. The movement on trade comes even as Pakistan is expected to notify a negative list of products on which it would not allow trade with India, which is a departure from the present practice of having a positive list that enables trade only in specified items. Having a negative list and grant of most favoured nation status has been a longstanding demand from New Delhi.

Erasing the scars of last July, when the foreign ministers clashed in public view, India and Pakistan on Wednesday managed the rare feat of speaking in one voice. They agreed to invest in a relationship of “trust and mutually beneficial cooperation’’. It wasn’t easy, given the differences over the usual blocks that cropped up during the meeting between foreign minister S M Krishna (78) and his counterpart Hina Rabbani Khar (34), but the two sides worked around them for foreign secretary Nirupama Rao to later declare that the “fog has now lifted” over the relationship. A number of confidencebuilding mechanisms (CBMs) to enhance cross-LoC trade and travel were announced after the talks between Khar and SM Krishna. “It is our desire to make the dialogue process uninterrupted and uninterruptible,” Khar said after the meeting, summing up the determination to stay engaged. The restraint was evident at the press conference of the two foreign secretaries where neither rose to the bait of provocative questions. The talks did not start on a very promising note, though. The meeting started with Krishna strongly expressing displeasure to the Pakistani delegation over Khar’s meeting with separatist Hurriyat leaders on Tuesday evening, ahead of the official talks. Krishna wanted to know what was the locus standi of the Hurriyat as it was not a representative of the people of India. He also took exception to the press statement Pakistan high commission had issued after the meeting with separatists. But Khar promptly assured him that she did not intend to offend India. The two sides did not let the issue overshadow the talks even in public. Rao confirmed that India had expressed concern over the meeting, and that it reflected divergences. She also emphasized that the neighbours had the political will to work together. Rao’s counterpart Salman Bashir also spoke in a conciliatory vein. He said the meeting with Hurriyat should not be construed as an attempt to cast a shadow over the talks.