India and Pakistan should revive back channels talks with special envoys that were held between 2000 to 2009, said a group of former Indian and Pakistani diplomats on Friday. The former diplomats, who served as High Commissioners of India in Pakistan and of Pakistan in India, were in Delhi for the first of its kind Track II meeting and also met senior officials, including National Security Advisor, Ajit Doval and the former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
At the end of the three days of discussions, they said that time was ripe to launch such a back-channel initiative especially after the Foreign Secretary-level meeting held on Tuesday on the sidelines of the Heart of Asia Conference Senior Officials Meeting.
The back channel talks that both sides referred to was held between India and Pakistan during the Vajpayee era when National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra and Pakistani envoy Tariq Aziz met to discuss options to solve the Kashmir issue.
The same was followed during the UPA era when Satinder K. Lambah as the Special Envoy of the Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh and Tariq Aziz as President Pervez Musharraf’s envoy held special dialogue on Kashmir dispute and terrorism from Pakistan.
However some diplomats say that such a dialogue may not work due to “policy confusion”. Kanwal Sibal, former Foreign Secretary said such talks would not succeed unless the civil-military discord inside Pakistan was resolved. But veteran diplomat K. Shankar Bajpai, came out in support of more Track II dialogue between two sides.
“Woodrow Wilson style diplomacy of “open covenants openly arrived at” will not work in South Asia. Covenants can be arrived at through back channel talks. I think both formal official level dialogue and back channel talks can go hand in hand,” Mr. Bajpai, said.
Analysing Prime Minister Modi’s recent overtures to Pakistan, including his dramatic brief visit to Lahore on December 25 2015, , former Pakistani High Commissioner to India Salman Bashir asked, “Does Prime Minister Modi have a Pakistan policy?,” and added, “We know that the UPA government ran a back channel talk with Pakistan. India and Pakistan should pick up where UPA left those talks.”
Mr. Bashir’s comments in favour of a back channel talks found support from Riaz Khokhar and Aziz Ahmed Khan.
Supporting greater role for veteran diplomats in India-Pak. affairs, the former High Commissioner of India to Pakistan and National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon, said a lot of progress was attained in the back channel talks led by Mr. Lambah and Mr. Aziz.
