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Peace process is on despite train fire-bombing |
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Harjit Singh
If the terrorists behind the Samjhauta Express train fire-bombings were hoping that along with the train, the Indo-Pak peace process too will be derailed, they were in for disappointment. While Pakistan President Musharraf condemned the terror attack and vowed not to let the peace process be deflected and his Foreign Minister Kasuri said the attack reinforced the need for more meaningful cooperation to fight terrorism, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh picked up the phone and spoke to his Pakistani counterpart to assure him that the culprits will not be spared. Though some telephone intercepts between the LeT commanders in Pakistan and Kashmir and the manufacture of the suitcases containing the explosives which failed to explode have been traced to Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh, a stronghold of LeT sympathizers and their terrorist sleeping cells, India has refused to blame them. Similarly, Pakistan has not spoken of any involvement of Hindu fundamentalists in the blasts which killed mostly Pakistani nationals.
Perhaps taking a cue from the strong Indian reaction to the Mumbai bomb blasts last July when New Delhi broke off the ongoing dialogue on the new round of the Composite Dialogue to protest against the serial blasts which were traced to terrorists linked to Pakistan’s ISI, this time they perhaps thought that Pakistan would react in the same fashion since most of those killed were Pakistani nationals returning to their country by the only rail link between the two countries. The timing of the attack itself was not without significance. Pakistan Foreign Minister Kasuri, was due to come to India; Mukherjee had just visited Pakistan and Foreign Secretary, Shiv Shanker Menon is due to go to Pakistan for the first meeting of the newly-formed Indo-Pakistan joint mechanism to fight terrorism. Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, is due to come to New Delhi early April to attend the SAARC summit. Further, India has not outright rejected the Pakistan President’s four-point peace plan and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who twice gave a guarded welcome to Musharraf’s Kashmir peace plan while visiting Amritsar, has shared with the people his dream of starting their journey with breakfast in Amritsar, lunch in Lahore and dinner in Kabul, if progress on development of people-to-people ties is maintained at the present pace.
In fact, only recently, Pakistan Foreign Minister Kasuri had shared the ‘secret’ with some newsmen of significant progress at back-channel negotiations on Kashmir of which only five people in Pakistan, understandably President Musharraf, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, he himself and the Pakistan National Security Advisor and Foreign Secretary, were aware of. India has not denied Kasuri’s claim officially. Both sides claim that they are close to an agreement on the demilitarization of Siachen while for the first time a joint survey in the disputed Sir Creek has been conducted and the Baglihar dispute is now out of the list of their disputes with the World Bank neutral expert giving his verdict in favour of India and Pakistan not following up on its threat to take the issue for arbitration.
It was in the background of the slow and steady progress in the Indo-Pak peace process that the terrorists struck once again after a comparatively long lull in the Kashmir Valley in the hope of sabotaging the ongoing dialogue process.
However, what marred this mature stand was the diplomatic spat over the Pakistani demand for a joint investigation into the carnage and the Indian rejection of it as well as the Pakistani refusal to make available Pakistani nationals like Rana Shaukat Ali and his wife, Rukhsana, who saw the two suspects getting involved in a heated argument with policemen and then leaving the train as it slowed down near Panipat. Since the Haryana police have released sketches of the suspects and seven men have been arrested resembling those sketches, the presence of some Pakistani nationals like Shaukat Ali was necessary for the investigation to make progress. Pakistan now expects India to share the investigation results at the first meeting of the Indo-Pak mechanism on terror which meets in Islamabad in the first week of next month. But, at the same time, it is coming in the way of a credible investigation by refusing to make available those whose cooperation could help in achieving a breakthrough. When Kasuri was in New Delhi, he emphasised that both India and Pakistan were victims of terrorism and if this was so, his country should not hesitate to extend its fullest cooperation to fight terrorism. In the past, Pakistan has refused to extradite any person on India’s list of wanted men and rejected the claim that they were hiding in Pakistan. This time when most of those killed were Pakistani nationals, if Islamabad hesitates to cooperate with India, it could expose itself to the ridicule of its own people.
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