Long road ahead

June 29, 2010 12:03 am | Updated 12:03 am IST

The main takeaway from the talks between India and Pakistan in Islamabad was that a dialogue between two sides burdened with a complex and difficult relationship has to be a constant, continuous process. It may not yield instant or even quick results. What it needs is political will to stay the course. Even by this scale of modest expectations, the two sets of talks last week managed to post some positive outcomes. Pointing to a new determination on both sides to make the dialogue process work, the discussions between the two Foreign Secretaries ended with the broad agreement to focus on the “doables,” a major change from previous such encounters at which all the emphasis was on the bilateral differences. The officials have thus managed to prepare a sound foundation for the scheduled July 15 meeting between the two Foreign Ministers, S. M. Krishna and Shah Mahmood Qureshi, who have been asked by their Prime Ministers to find ways to bridge the trust gap. Exactly what “doables” are being contemplated towards this end should become clear after this ministerial meeting. Although the two rounds of meetings between Home Minister P. Chidambaram and the Pakistan Interior Minister, Rehman Malik — on the sidelines of the SAARC conference of Home Ministers — have focussed mainly on the issue of the Mumbai attacks, there seems to be a new realisation on the Pakistan side that it needs to address Indian concerns on this more seriously. The announcement by Mr. Malik that his government was willing to share with Indian investigators the voice samples of some of the key accused in the Mumbai case who are under trial in Pakistan, so that these can be matched with the voices of the handlers who were directing the attacks, is a crucial step in trust-building. Mr. Chidambaram rightly pointed out that it was over the Mumbai attacks that relations between the two countries unravelled; in order to repair the ties, issues arising from these attacks need to be squarely dealt with.

Also immensely useful in taking the dialogue process forward after the Foreign Ministers' talks would be, as officials in New Delhi have noted, a clear acknowledgment from Pakistan of the progress made during the pre-2008 peace process. This has so far not been forthcoming, possibly because of the unease of owning a Musharraf legacy, even though it should flow naturally from the Pakistan government's insistence on the resumption of the composite dialogue process. Both sides will soon have to devote considerable diplomatic energy to arrive at a mutually acceptable framework for a full-scale dialogue, and it would be sensible to build on the achievements of the four rounds of talks that were held between 2004 and 2007.

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