ISLAMABAD - It will be more of the same old story when the Prime Minister’s Adviser on National Security and Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz meets Indian External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid in New Delhi next week - another bilateral meeting on the sidelines of yet another multilateral event with no concrete outcome likely.
In a sign of growing cynicism at both ends, indications from diplomatic quarters in New Delhi and Islamabad are that their meeting will be more of a photo-op offering little promise.
Although not confirmed, there is also a possibility that Mr Aziz will get the green light from New Delhi to call-on Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Pakistan and India have traded allegations for unprovoked firing at the Line of Control (LoC) and a key decision taken by prime ministers of the two countries at their September 29 New York summit regarding meeting of their respective DGMOs to observe sanctity of the 2003 ceasefire agreement has still not materialised. Disappointment has been conveyed from both sides at the official as well as political level.
The assessment on this side is that India is not interested in pursuing a structured dialogue process with Pakistan at this stage and is avoiding reaching out too much due to domestic political considerations. Another factor could be the pressure from the Indian army as it now seems to be asserting itself more on New Delhi’s Pakistan policy. Hence many believe that the Indian side will be merely going through the motion of staying engaged to ward off international pressure and to be seen as a reasonable major regional power.
There is reason to believe that the old theme of Shikwah and Jawab-i-shikwah (grievance and counter-grievance) that characterise Pakistan-India relations will dominate when the two top diplomats meet for bilateral talks.
The meeting will largely be a reiteration of same old talking points as the two South Asian neighbours have barely moved beyond the September 29 New York summit, it is learnt. Even the Pakistan-India back-channel diplomacy has not yielded promising results as regards resumption of a result-oriented bilateral dialogue.
The Aziz-Khurshid meeting will take place on the sidelines of Asia-Europe foreign ministers’ meeting slated for October 11-12. This will be their fourth interaction since July when they first met in Brunei on the margins of ASEAN meetings and decided to put the senior official-level bilateral dialogue process back on track. However, the August 6 LoC flare-up derailed the planned meetings. Their second meeting was in Bishkek on the sidelines of a SCO meeting. They last met on the margins of UN General Assembly session in September during the Sharif-Manmohan summit.
India has repeatedly said that any progress in the dialogue process hinges on “peace and tranquillity” on the LoC and therefore it will be a key talking point in the upcoming meeting that according to the Indian side will be ‘limited’ in nature.
Notably for almost two weeks now the guns have fallen silent at the LoC where the situation worsened after the August 6 flare-up that strained relations. The intriguing ‘silence’ on the LoC could be a calculated move by India not wanting to rock the boat ahead of the major multilateral event it is hosting next week. Also to contain the situation some ‘quiet diplomacy’ involving Western powers including the US cannot be ruled out.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has consistently advocated at national and international level his government’s ‘peace diplomacy’ with India to improve ties. His thrust has been on resumption of the stalled peace process to resolve all outstanding issues between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
The Prime Minister’s Special Assistant on Foreign Affairs, Mr Tariq Fatemi, said Wednesday: “There cannot be peace in the region unless the country establishes cordial and cooperative relations with India.”
However, at this point the resumption of the bilateral Composite Dialogue, considered an integral part of Pakistan-India peace process, seems unlikely, officials say.
Initiated in February 2004, Pakistan-India composite dialogue has been disrupted several times by incidents that soured relations. The bilateral dialogue process is aimed at confidence building, normalisation of bilateral relations and dispute resolution.