Pak red carpet for Team India as talks open today

New Delhi believes that Islamabad’s instructions to terrorists to continue to lie low as long as the formal dialogue keeps producing results is one of the reasons for the peace, although the Indian fencing along the LoC and the November 26 ceasefire have also significantly contributed to the results. Much of the reinvented dialogue is really about putting new wine in old bottles ‘‘such as Siachen, Sir Creek, Tulbul/Sir Creek, trade and economic cooperation and people-to-people contacts that will be held at the Secretary-level on both sides’’ but it is the new ideas on refurbishing issues like Kashmir, as well as peace and security and confidence-building measures that will form the nub of this week’s Islamabad round.

Pakistan is already believed to have proposed the upgradation of the Kashmir element from the Foreign Secretary-level to a Committee on Kashmir, whose principal interlocutors will be Principal Secretary Brajesh Mishra and its National Security Council secretary Tariq Aziz.

Both Mishra and Aziz, whose back-channel talks over the previous seven months resulted in the historic January 6 statement between PM Vajpayee and President Musharraf in Islamabad, share the confidence of their top leadership, Islamabad argues, and should be ideally suited for discussing this sensitive issue.

On the eve of the talks, though, the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi still seemed rather hesitant about upgrading the level, especially since elections will soon be held in India. New Delhi also argued that the Foreign Secretary level remained ideal and if necessary, the senior bureacrats could always return to their bosses in the PMO and in Musharraf’s office respectively, to resolve any prickly issue that came up.

Another Pakistani proposal is to also create a new Committee on Nuclear Confidence-Building measures, thereby dividing the first item on the old composite dialogue into two parts.

New Delhi may not be averse to the suggestion, especially in the light of US President Bush’s speech last week on reinventing the nuclear world order as well as the stink that continues to emanate from the A Q Khan nuclear double-talk in these last decades.

It is, therefore, likely that the remaining part of the first item, on Confidence-Building measures, will focus on expanding existing links and contacts between the two countries, such as additional buses from Lahore-Amritsar (proposed by Islamabad some months ago), from Jammu to Sialkot across the international border in Jammu & Kashmir, and other links.

The argument here is that with both countries having strong positions on the most fundamental issue, Kashmir, new CBMs that create new linkages will create a process that will in turn propel forward the formal dialogue between the two Foreign Offices.

The MEA’s joint secretary Arun Singh will dialogue with his counterpart Jalil Jilani, director-general of South Asia, for the first two days (Monday and Tuesday), while Foreign Secretaries Shashank and Riaz Khokhar will wrap up the final meeting on February 18.

The compromise format — India wanted this meeting to be at the joint secretary level, while Pakistan favoured a higher, FS level — is likely to set the tone of the discussions as well. Both officials seem determined to play pragmatically so that this round does not end up where neither side wants it to go.