India will resume structured peace talks with Pakistan two years and two months after they were suspended following the terrorist attacks in Mumbai.
In a concession to Islamabad, all issues, including, but not limited to, Jammu and Kashmir, will be discussed, but without the label of composite dialogue.
As per the decision announced simultaneously in New Delhi and Islamabad, official-level talks on nine subjects will be scheduled over the next few months. They are: counter-terrorism (including progress on the trial of the terrorists who carried out the Mumbai attacks); humanitarian issues; peace and security, including confidence-building measures; Jammu and Kashmir; promotion of friendly exchanges; Siachen; economic issues; Wullar barrage/Tulbul navigation project; and Sir Creek (at the level of additional secretaries/surveyors-general).
It will be topped by the meetings between the two foreign secretaries and foreign ministers, which can be expected to be held in New Delhi by July.
India had been maintaining that the talks could not resume until Pakistan gave it satisfaction on the issue of terrorism in general, and the Mumbai attacks in particular. However, Pakistan stuck to an all-or-nothing approach, insisting that the talks should focus on all outstanding issues, including Jammu and Kashmir.
The structure of the proposed talks resembles the composite dialogue to the extent that it has all the eight subjects of the past, except that the items have been unbundled. The new addition, the ninth, is “humanitarian issues”. Also, instead of discussing “terrorism and drug trafficking”, both sides now will focus on counter-terrorism, including progress on the Mumbai attacks case.
Thursday’s decision signals a reversion to the Sharm el-Sheikh joint statement, in which Prime Ministers Manmohan Singh and Yousuf Raza Gilani agreed that “action on terrorism should not be linked to the composite dialogue process and these should not be bracketed”.
In Islamabad, Prime Minister Gilani welcomed the announcement, saying it marks the culmination of the efforts made by him and Prime Minister Singh over the last several months, most recently at Thimphu in April 2010 on the margins of the Saarc summit.
Prime Minister Singh’s office did not put out any statement, but foreign secretary Nirupama Rao, who met her Pakistan counterpart in Thimphu a few days ago, described the decision to restart “serious, sustained and comprehensive” talks as “very pragmatic”.
India and Pakistan have concluded four rounds of the composite dialogue. The first round of the composite dialogue was held in October and November 1998. The fifth round of the dialogue process was suspended after the Mumbai attacks. The dialogue was disrupted on many occasions, most notably after the attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001. It resumed only in January 2004. The July 2006 train blasts in Mumbai affected bilateral ties, too, but the talks were restarted after Prime Minister Singh and the then Pakistan President, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, met on the sidelines of the Non-Aligned Movement summit in September 2006.
The dialogue made incremental progress over the years but the last round was seen as being the most productive. Prime Minister Singh said on the eve of the 2009 parliamentary elections that he was close to clinching an agreement with Gen. Musharraf but the 2007 lawyers’ protests led to Gen. Musharraf stepping down in 2008.
In January this year, Mr Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, a former foreign minister of Pakistan, echoed similar sentiments. He said in New Delhi that by late 2006 India and Pakistan had come close to an agreed draft on the contours of a settlement on Kashmir, Siachen and Sir Creek. He said India would do well to seize the consensus that exists in military and political circles in Pakistan that peace must be given another chance. He also noted that Prime Minister Singh must consider visiting Pakistan so that the progress made in backchannel negotiations is not frittered away.