Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s excuse that the present time was unsuitable for him to visit Pakistan was not entirely unexpected. In fact, perceptive subcontinent watchers were quite certain that he would put forward this standard polite insult. In Islamabad’s perception, however, time is ripe for such a high-level visit since relations between the countries have been looking up. After all, it has only recently sanctioned granting to India most favoured nation status, even risking the interests of its own economy that would have to face hard competition with the free flow of goods available at cheaper rates.
Dispassionate comparison of Pakistan’s efforts to normalise relations with India’s response would make a despairing reading. it leaves little room for doubt that Pakistan has been doing the maximum, with India showing no matching reaction. The CBMs are a case in point. Unfortunately, the Indians have not been attaching much significance to these tangible Pakistani gestures. We can trace this attitude at least from Ziaul Haq’s period. He took cover of ‘cricket diplomacy’ to demonstrate Islamabad’s keenness to improve relations with New Delhi, but it made no headway. Similarly, Musharraf’s attempt at initiating composite dialogue that conceded structured negotiations simultaneously to take place to resolve disputes between the two states, including Kashmir, failed to make India budge from its traditional stand, unacceptable to Pakistan, on all the issues under discussion. The exercise has virtually petered out without bringing any fruitful result. Even when the talks seem to be making progress, at the end of the day they go back to square one. The present government did not lag behind; rather it has gone out of the way to please New Delhi and yet the bogey of terrorism is resurrected whenever time comes for it to reciprocate. The only time the Nawaz Sharif government managed Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajplayee to wish Pakistan well while he was at Minar-e-Pakistan, Lahore, was sabotaged by the Kargil operations. Nevertheless, the hawks in India whose attitude gets support in government circles would not have let relations proceed beyond this verbal show of friendliness. During this period, the Indian Prime Minister has been invited to visit Pakistan several times, each time eliciting the same response of the time not being suitable.
There lies an object lesson for our leadership. There is no justification for putting our vital disputes on the backburner in the idealistic hope that it may encourage New Delhi change its mind. We must insist on the resolution of the core issue of Kashmir on the basis of our principled stand, before making any concessions and in this regard take up the matter at all international forums, explaining the background of the case as well as the human rights abuses against the besieged Kashmiris.