The much-awaited India-Pakistan summit level meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani will take place on the sidelines of the SAARC summit on Thursday evening, Foreign Office spokesperson Vishnu Prakash announced here on Wednesday.
India has not accepted Pakistan’s offer of resuming the Composite Dialogue as it feels Islamabad has not done enough to bring to book all the accused responsible for the Mumbai terror attacks. The media here has speculated on what else Dr. Singh will convey to Mr. Gilani but senior officials declined to confirm these reports.
The issue became complicated recently when Pakistan Interior Minister Rehman Malik upped the ante by asking India to send its magistrates involved in the Kasab case to testify in a Lahore Court. Barely a few days earlier he had said the Government was confident of securing the conviction of most of the seven accused for the November 2008 Mumbai attacks and all it required from India were Kasab’s statements made in a Mumbai court.
On the other hand, India has expressed its unhappiness over the freedom of movement allowed in Pakistan to some of the masterminds of the Mumbai terror attacks. It feels that Pakistan Government must show its earnestness by rounding up all those involved in the attacks. Only then could both sides pick up the threads of the Composite Dialogue which was a victim to the attacks.
India also wants Islamabad to guarantee that there would be no repeat of such attacks on Indian soil by non state actors based in Pakistan as well as dismantling of the anti-India terror infrastructure mostly in Pakistan Punjab and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. However, the Pakistan government and its security agencies have shied away from holding out such an assurance indicating instead that the two sides should sit across the table to discuss threats faced to each other’s security by non-state actors.
India has documented instances of involvement of Pakistan based elements in terror attacks in the country and on its mission in Kabul. Islamabad too makes accusations of Indian meddling in Baluchistan and Swat but has not given any evidence so far to India or the U.S. to back its claims.
