The Hindu : National : A season for talks

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jun 16, 2004

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National

A season for talks

By Amit Baruah

NEW DELHI, JUNE 15. It's going to be talks and more talks for India and Pakistan. Inclusive of today's meeting of the bilateral committee on drug trafficking and smuggling in Islamabad, the two countries will have at least 14 interactions till July end.

"The atmosphere is good. All these talks constitute the spadework for the August meeting between the Foreign Ministers. These will be a step forward," the former High Commissioner to Pakistan, S.K. Lambah, told this correspondent today.

On June 19-20, the much-delayed meeting between experts dealing with nuclear confidence-building measures (CBMs) will take place here. They will try to flesh out the February 1999 Lahore memorandum of understanding on reducing nuclear risks between the two countries.

A day later, the Water Resources Secretaries will meet, again in the Capital, to discuss Pakistan's concerns on the Baglihar dam, an issue that Islamabad has repeatedly raised in public fora.

On June 27-28, the Foreign Secretaries will discuss peace and security, including CBMs, and Jammu and Kashmir as part of the resumed round one in the composite dialogue.

To complete one round in the "two plus six" process, officials will talk Siachen, Wullar barrage/Tulbul navigation project, Sir Creek, terrorism and drug trafficking, economic and commercial cooperation as well as promotion of friendly exchanges in various fields during separate meetings in July. The venue and dates of these meetings are yet to be fixed.

The External Affairs Minister, Natwar Singh, will have the opportunity to meet his Pakistani counterpart, Khurshid Mehmud Kasuri, on the sidelines of the Asia Cooperation Dialogue (ACD) meeting in Qingdao, China, on June 20-21. [Here, Mr. Singh is also likely to have his first meetings with the Foreign Ministers of China, Japan, South Korea and Oman, sources in the Ministry of External Affairs said.] Mr. Singh will meet Mr. Kasuri again on July 1-2, on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Under the umbrella of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, Joint Secretaries, Foreign Secretaries and Foreign Ministers will meet in a multi-lateral setting in Islamabad on July 20-21. Here, the Indian and Pakistani Foreign Secretaries and Ministers are likely to meet bilaterally.

With India and Pakistan returning to discuss the same issues the talks on which were interrupted due to the Kargil War of 1999, both sides will have to show patience in sustaining the process. "There is unlikely to be any substantive progress in one round," an analyst said.

"The Pakistanis are likely to re-state their proposal for a strategic restraint regime - a proposal that has had the blessings of the Americans," a former Indian official, who has dealt with Pakistan, said. "Their idea has been to contain the development of the Indian nuclear programme. They want to bring down our nuclear programme to that of theirs."

While India has maintained that its nuclear programme was not Pakistan-specific, the countries, he felt, would have little problem in discussing concrete nuclear risk reduction measures, including avoiding an accidental exchange, as well as talking about their respective doctrines. On the Kashmir issue [to be discussed by the Foreign Secretaries], he said that if Pakistan insisted on achieving immediate progress, there could be problems in the dialogue process.

However, he too felt that the atmosphere was positive and the talks should be "devoid of contention," but added that the dialogue could well involve a re-statement of the past positions.

Whatever the differences, the expectation is that India and Pakistan would keep them confined to the conference room and not articulate them in public.

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