Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif has sent a special envoy, former Foreign Secretary Shaharyar Khan, to India to convey to his counterpart Manmohan Singh “Pakistan’s sincere desire to move forward on improving relations with India”. In a letter that the envoy carried when he called on Dr Singh on Friday, Mian Nawaz urged him that the process of dialogue between the two countries should be resumed from the point of understanding where it was left when Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and he had met in 1999. And talks must also continue for the resolution of the Kashmir dispute. Referring to the wars the two countries had fought, Pakistan’s PM opined that confrontation never benefited anyone and its main fallout affected the masses. And it was only peace that provided the required atmosphere to make development for the greater good of the general public. This was the second high-level encounter between the officials of Pakistan and India that has taken place in the same week and at the instance of Mian Nawaz, reaffirming the overtures of goodwill and peace with New Delhi he has been making since his victory at the polls. Earlier, his Advisor on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz had met Indian External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid at Brunei. Mr Shaharyar also met Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon, the External Affairs Minister and Foreign Secretary. As a result, it was decided to resume talks within two to three months, after the new government at Islamabad had ‘settled down’.The Indian side, however, continued to insist on bringing to justice the perpetrators of the Mumbai massacre before anything else. Mr Khurshid said on Friday that Pakistan had to ‘fix accountability for the 2008 Mumbai attacks’ to resume meaningful talks. “This is something we can’t wish away and should not wish away,” he remarked in an interview with a Singaporean newspaper.Why Prime Minister Nawaz chose to despatch the special envoy to New Delhi while he was in China suggests that he wanted to send a message to Beijing as well as Washington; for both were eager for Islamabad to make peace with India and establish economic ties with it. Beijing has long advocated that Pakistan should put the contentious issues on the backburner, develop itself economically and take them up at a later appropriate time. On the other hand, Washington, wary of our fast growing ties with Beijing, would get some comfort from Islamabad’s initiative aimed at warming up to India. Mian Nawaz must remember that overlooking Kashmir at this juncture when India appears to be in a great hurry to steal our shares of water flowing from Kashmir, would make Pakistan a barren land earlier than expected.