India is dealing with a nuclear-armed neighbour that perpetually seeks to leverage its ‘bad boy’ reputation, bilaterally, regionally and internationally
It was all too predictable in the light of experience that Pakistan “very strongly rejected” — to quote its foreign secretary Jalial Abbas Jilani, who held two days of talks with India’s Ranjan Mathai in New Delhi, which ended on Thursday — this country’s suggestion that Pakistani “state actors” were actively involved in conceiving and executing the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai.
As such, the foreign secretary-level talks, described as “constructive and frank” in a joint statement, produced little more than anodyne expressions of good intent in normalising ties between the two countries.
Mr Mathai appropriately noted that the best confidence-building measure between the mutually suspicious neighbours would be for Islamabad to give evidence of going after the planners and executors of 26/11. This is clearly not happening. The reason is the direct involvement of Inter-Services Intelligence in the outrage. With no hope of the best CBM materialising, the decision reached at the talks to convene expert groups to examine nuclear-related and trans-LoC CBMs, and look to boosting sporting ties and enhancing pilgrimage-related traffic between the two countries, will appear to be no more than an effort to keep the channels of communication open.
This too is not without value in dealing with a nuclear-armed neighbour that perpetually seeks to leverage its “bad boy” reputation, bilaterally, regionally and internationally. It is evident India does not have any blinkers on while dealing with Islamabad. External affairs minister S.M. Krishna noted before the foreign secretaries’ talks that it had to be determined if the “trust deficit” between the two countries had been reduced. (The answer, alas, is in the negative.) Union home minister P. Chidambaram said even when the high-level official talks were on that Pakistani “state actors” were involved in 26/11. A clear indication of this was that Zabiullah Ansari, alias Abu Jundal, the Indian terrorist present at the control room in Karachi from where the Mumbai attacks were directed minute-to-minute, was deported to India from Saudi Arabia where he was living on a false Pakistani passport.
It is not certain if India-Pakistan relations can improve dramatically by the time Mr Krishna travels to Islamabad for the ministerial dialogue, probably in September. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has accepted an invitation to visit Pakistan provided some “outcomes” precede his visit. On current appearances, the best one can say is that the relationship remains uncertain, though prospects haven’t dimmed entirely on trade relations advancing in the not too distant future.
The Pakistan foreign secretary chose to meet Kashmiri separatist leaders before his official engagements in India. That was hardly good diplomatic form, and appeared calibrated to give the weakened and fractious separatist outfits a morale-boost. To construct goodwill is going to be a long haul.
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