The rivals have met for the first time since the Mumbai terrorist attack, writes RAHUL BEDIin New Delhi
INDIA YESTERDAY said it had taken the first step towards rebuilding trust with nuclear rival Pakistan in their first bilateral talks in New Delhi since the November 2008 terrorist attack on Mumbai.
“We have agreed to remain in touch,” Indian foreign secretary Nirupma Rao said after the three-hour meeting with the nine-member delegation led by Pakistani counterpart Salman Bashir.
Ms Rao said there was a need to bridge the lack of trust between the two sides in the meeting in which India and Pakistan talked stridently at each other.
India reiterated its concerns about terrorist attacks emanating from Pakistan – it claims the Mumbai attacks and numerous other previous strikes were executed by terrorists from Pakistan – and stressed to Islamabad that it must do more to dismantle Islamist militant networks.
Mr Bashir, addressing reporters separately and often contradicting Ms Rao, said Pakistan had raised broader issues.
These included the 62-year dispute over Kashmir – divided between the neighbours but claimed by both – allegations that India was aiding militants in the western Pakistani province of Baluchistan and in Afghanistan, and a looming conflict over shared water resources.
“There is a huge gap between expectation and reality underscored by mistrust,” Mr Bashir said, adding that there was a need to engage meaningfully across the board on all outstanding issues.
Chillingly, Mr Bashir reminded India that bilateral “terms of engagement as two nuclear states” imposed a special responsibility on both countries to arrive at a mutually agreed regime of strategic restraint.
Since independence in 1947 India and Pakistan have fought three wars and an 11-week military skirmish along the Kashmir border that threatened to escalate into a nuclear exchange but was resolved with US intervention.
The nuclear threat loomed again after Pakistani-based gunmen attacked the Indian parliament in 2001 and both sides deployed their armies along the frontier ready for battle.
Loose talk of nuclear war led to foreigners fleeing Delhi and embassies moving their staff to distant locations.
Meanwhile, neither of the two foreign secretaries said whether there would be a next round of talks other than to reiterate that sustained contact would be maintained.
The meeting was less about issues and more about getting the two countries to return to the negotiating table.
Between 2004 and 2007 the neighbours conducted an inconclusive “composite dialogue” focusing on eight contentious issues that included Kashmir, unresolved maritime boundaries, cross-border terrorism, drug smuggling, nuclear and conventional military confidence building measures, economic co-operation and enhancing people-to-people contacts.
Disputed frontiers in the marshy Sir Creek region alongside the Arabian Sea and the military face-off along the northern Siachen glacier were also part of the dialogue that made incremental progress before being terminated after the November 2008 attack on Mumbai in which 166 people died.
“Expectations from the talks from the onset were modest, and a simple pledge to continue contact may be the best officials can hope for,” Pakistan expert and columnist Seema Mustafa said. There is little else they achieved, she added.