The former Foreign Minister of Pakistan, Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, has emphasised that his country's Army was always kept in the loop on all initiatives to normalise ties with India.
In fact, during official and backchannel talks that were disrupted by the 2008 Mumbai attacks, the Pakistan Army‘s top brass, including present Chief of the Army Staff Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, were informed about the developments when they took place, Mr. Kasuri told The Hindu .
Although it is a popular notion in India that the Pakistan Army constantly created hurdles to peace, Mr. Kasuri used the recent Wikileaks revelations to point out that top-level commanders like Gen. Kayani (then ISI chief) were co-operating with the process of dialogue. Earlier, speaking at a seminar, he was emphatic in declaring that all stakeholders, including the Army, were fully behind the backchannel negotiations that took place in the past.
Mr. Kasuri regretted that in 2006, when both countries were on the cusp of reaching a solution on several key issues including Kashmir, a judicial crisis resulted in the removal of Pervez Musharraf. Similarly, backchannel negotiations were looking to produce concrete results when terrorists struck Mumbai in November 2008, bringing the dialogue to a grinding halt. But to Mr. Kasuri, these events could not be allowed to dictate terms in defining the way forward for both countries.
Instead, parliamentarians from both countries must be willing to “expend their political capital and stick their neck on the line” to revive the talks.
Mr. Kasuri said that the India-Pakistan relations registered an improvement “without precedent” in the past decade, which both governments risked losing unless regular contact was maintained at the highest levels.
Contentious issues, ranging from Kashmir to Siachen and Sir Creek, were bound to have different versions on either side of the border, but if one were to let these narratives apply pressure on the peace process, years of painstaking negotiations would come to naught.
As he chronicled the relations in the past decade, Mr. Kasuri observed that peace “with honour” was the only way forward. No “sane person” could even contemplate a military solution, given the nuclearisation of the region.
