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Joint mechanism on terror : Will Pakistan honour its commitment ? |
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B.I. Saini
India and Pakistan last week gave shape to the anti-terror joint mechanism which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf had agreed to set up during their meeting on the sidelines of the Havana Non-aligned summit. The mechanism, to be headed by Additional Secretaries of the two countries, will function as the nodal point for countering terrorism. Its mandate will be to consider counter-terrorism measures through “regular and timely” sharing of information.
India also used the Foreign Secretary-level talks to share evidence on Pakistani involvement in the Delhi and Varanasi blasts and information relating to terror suspects arrested in Mysore, Karnataka. Material evidence on the 7/11 Mumbai serial blasts was not handed over because the charge-sheets have not been filed in these cases. India, however, verbally raised the Mumbai blasts issue and made clear its concerns to Pakistan.
Though India has decided to share evidence of Pakistani links with terror strikes in the country with Islamabad, the chances that it will make Pakistan end the flow of terrorist elements to India do not appear to be very bright, going by past experience. Pakistani authorities have shown a marked resistance to taking any effective action against the leaders of terrorist organisations like the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad living in that country. Their excuse is that Pakistan has also banned these organisations and cannot take action against their former leaders without corroborative or supporting evidence. It ignores the fact that the terrorist outfits banned in Pakistan are merrily continuing with their activities after reincarnating themselves under new names.
Pakistan has been dragging its feet on dismantling the terrorist training camps existing on its soil and in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Islamabad has refused to hand over to India terrorists and mafia dons named by New Delhi who are living in that country.
External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee has made clear India’s position that it is not convinced of Pakistan’s denial of involvement in terrorist strikes across the border. He said last week that India has “reasonably strong evidence” of the involvement of Pakistani government agencies in terrorism within the country. About the functioning of the joint mechanism against terror, Mukherjee said that the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. He said, in the past also India had given Pakistan evidence of the location of terrorist training camps and of terrorist organisations, but no action was forthcoming by Islamabad.
If the joint mechanism on terror is to make any difference to relations between the two countries and take forward the composite dialogue, Pakistan will need to be sincere to its commitment not to allow terrorist activities against India from territories under its control. Pakistan’s response to evidence that it has been encouraging terrorist outfits is to just deny the charges. This will not work. If India and Pakistan are to make progress towards settling contentious issues like the Kashmir question, among others, Pakistan will have to end support to terrorist elements.
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