The Hindu : Islamabad's response awaited

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, May 05, 2003

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Islamabad's response awaited

By Amit Baruah

NEW DELHI May 4. India is awaiting an official Pakistani response to the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee's proposal to exchange High Commissioners and restore direct flights between the two countries.

Official sources told this correspondent that once this response came in, New Delhi and Islamabad could move towards discussing the details on both fronts. On the civil aviation side, for instance, there would be many details to work out. India is also hopeful that Pakistan will respond to its concerns on terrorism — even some small movement would indicate that Islamabad is serious about addressing the issue.

In his reply to the Pakistani leader, Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, the Prime Minister made it clear that an end to cross-border terrorism and dismantling the terrorist infrastructure could create a conducive atmosphere for talks.

Mr. Vajpayee may not be making talks hostage to an "end" to cross-border terrorism now, but his concerns on the question are direct and transparent. Given that the very public activities of groups such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Jaish-e-Muhammad persist in Pakistan, India will continue to press Islamabad on this issue.

India must take up specifically and systematically its points on terrorism with Pakistan. Its request for the "wanted" can also be made sitting across the table. By not engaging, India had given a handle to those who felt its "next move" would be an aggressive move on Pakistan. This is precisely the point that many who saw India-Pakistan relations in a different light from the "hawkish" perspective that had held sway after the failure of the Agra summit and the December 13, 2001, attack on Parliament House, have been making.

In one sense, the "failures" in Lahore and Agra might have opened the eyes of the leaderships of India and Pakistan that a summit-level meeting here or there is not going to dramatically alter the terms of bilateral discourse.

In February 1999, when Lahore happened, India was unaware that by the mere fact of the "bus journey" it was sharpening the contradictions within the Pakistani establishment itself. For some, Agra was a mysterious move coming as it did after a policy of total non-contact with the regime of Pervez Musharraf.

Mr. Vajpayee may have spoken his heart out in the Rajya Sabha on Friday, but staying the course in this process of renewed contact is unlikely to be easy.

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