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Preparing for Round II of Indo-Pak dialogue |
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The second round of a composite dialogue between India and Pakistan at the level of their Foreign Secretaries, as originally scheduled, will be held on December 23 and 24. Besides reviewing the progress in the talks on various issues, the meeting will take up the issue of peace and security, confidence-building measures and Jammu and Kashmir.
The first round of meetings was held early this year followed by talks between the Foreign Secretaries and the Foreign Ministers in New Delhi in September. The eight-point agenda of the composite dialogue is aimed at the resolution of all outstanding issues, including that of Jammu and Kashmir.
The second round will be held in Islamabad as the first one was conducted in New Delhi. Talks will be held on other issues, including those of Siachen, Wullar barrage, Sir Creek, terrorism and drug trafficking, economic and commercial cooperation, and promotion of friendly exchange in various fields. The meeting of the narcotics control bodies and that of a panel of experts on trade issues have been postponed. Expert-level talks on nuclear and conventional confidence-building measures will be held in New Delhi and a joint survey of boundary pillars in Sir Creek will be carried out in Karachi in mid-December.
Talks between the railway authorities on the Munabao-Khokrapar rail link were held in Islamabad on December 2 and 3, followed by a meeting of Coast Guard officials in Delhi. The Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service proposal will be discussed in New Delhi on December 7 and 8.
The indication that the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road would be reopened became more strong, when a high-level official team, led by Alok Rawat, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Surface Transport, ended its two-day visit to Kashmir on November 30. The team had been constituted to study the infrastructure needed at the Uri checkpost when the road linking Srinagar with Muzaffarabad was thrown open for travel and trade. The team comprised officials from the Ministry of External Affairs, the Immigration Department, the Customs Department and the Finance Ministry. The team members inspected the Lal Pull, the last point on the border for a survey of the area so that areas could be identified for the construction of offices connected with immigration, Customs, passport and security. On its return to New Delhi, the team will submit its reports to the Government of India. With the possibilities of reopening the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road getting brighter, the demand for the opening of the Suchetgarh-Sialkot road in Jammu is also being revived by border residents.
The Government of India has drawn up a nine-point strategy to promote people-to-people interaction between the two parts of divided Kashmir. The strategy unveiled on November 29 places a considerable accent on opening road links to Pak-occupied Kashmir (PoK). The strategy devised by the Home Ministry lays stress on the Government working on opening the Uri-Muzaffarabad, Kargil-Skardu and Jammu-Sialkot roads. The Government hopes that the road building will strengthen people-to-people contact and reduce hostilities. India may even relent from its insistence on people having passports and visas to winking at visa stamps.
Observers say India is right in asking for a bus service from Srinagar to Muzaffarabad to increase people-to-people contact. From 30 visas in 2002, India now issues 10,000 visas for Pakistanis. There have been numerous reports of the Indian Government offering medical assistance to Pakistanis, especially children. All this can only serve to build goodwill for India in Pakistan. Encouraging more Pakistanis to come to India will also give them a chance to see India’s free and open society at work. It will help remove many misgivings they have about India. In the end, a swell of public goodwill towards India will make it easier for any Pakistani Government to move forward with the peace process. Hardliners may argue that when dealing with a military dictatorship, security and political issues must first be resolved. But as seen for decades, it is not likely that the dreaded K-word will be solved overnight nor indeed the issue of cross-border terrorism. So the next best thing is to work on less contentious issues like making it easier for ordinary citizens on both sides to meet each other. By keeping people apart, successive governments on both sides have been able to demonize the other. With the movement of people will come an understanding and appreciation of each other. This will help us put our bitter past behind us and move on.
Another proposal on the table is a bus service between Amritsar and Lahore. The Chief Minister of Pakistan’s Punjab province, Pervaiz Elahi, has said the Government of his country is prepared to start a special bus service between Lahore and Amritsar which would be connected to the Sikh shrines at Nankana Sahib and Kartarpur. Elahi who was on a visit to the Indian State of Punjab told a gathering at the Golden Temple in Amritsar on December 2 that Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz had authorized him to announce that their Government would await the response from India for starting the special bus service at the earliest. He promised to remove all encroachments from the historical gurdwaras and said Nankana Sahib, the birthplace of the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak Dev, will be developed as a model city.
At the same time, the first Indo-Pak Punjab games are taking place in Patiala where West Punjab (Pakistan) is fielding a 30-member strong contingent of women athletes.
India and Pakistan however, continue to differ on the hydel power project in Jammu and Kashmir called the Baghlihar project. A Pak-media report suggests that Islamabad may be on the point of bringing in a neutral expert on the Baghlihar project on the Chinar outside the framework of bilateral process. The Wullar barrage and the Kishenganga project in Jammu and Kashmir have also led to tensions between India and Pakistan.
On the Baghlihar project discussions between India and Pakistan have been going on for several years. Indian experts are convinced that the Baghlihar project is entirely within the framework of the Indus Waters Treaty. Analysts say since the treaty was signed, Pakistan has objected to virtually every project that has been taken up in Jammu and Kashmir on the Indus water system. At one level, it has paranoia about usage in J&K of the waters that subsequently flow into Pakistan. Pakistan’s paranoia, the analysts say, extends to such an extent that for its own selfish reasons it wants to prevent even legitimate and treaty-permitted usage in J&K.
While India is preparing for the second round of talks, it has conveyed to Pakistan that a sustained and productive dialogue between the two countries requires an atmosphere free from cross- border terrorism. Minister of State for External Affairs E. Ahamed told the Rajya Sabha on Dec. 2 that India’s position had been conveyed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Pakistan President Musharraf during their New York meeting as well as during Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz’s visit to New Delhi.
Ahamed said New Delhi had told Islamabad that the dialogue process was based on Musharraf’s commitment that any territory under Pakistan’s control would not be used for terrorist activities. He said India had asked Pakistan to put an end to cross-border infiltration and dismantle terrorist infrastructure permanently. He said although there had been some decline in cross-border infiltration in the recent past, no credible or long-term action had been taken by Pakistan against the terrorist infrastructure, including training camps, launching pads and communication centres.
In this context, the Government is bound to take serious note of the observation by the Director-General of the Border Security Force, Ajay Raj Sharma that Pakistan’s ISI directorate was training terrorists to get through the barbed wire fence erected by India to check their infiltration across the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir and the India-Pakistan border. Addressing newsmen on the eve of the 39th Raising Day of the BSF, Sharma alleged that the ISI was training terrorists to negotiate and breach the fence. He claimed that the drills by militants included breach of the fence by use of ladders wire cutters and ways to avoid parts of the fence electrified by India to prevent infiltration. The militants he alleged were practising these drills on sand and wooden models of the LoC and had in fact tried to sneak into the country. The Army and the BSF had managed to foil many attempts but, he admitted, some militants might have managed to get through the Indian defences especially in the rugged and mountainous terrain of the border State. He said infiltration had no doubt come down in the last four months which, he added, was very normal during the winter months and factors like sustained action by the Army and the BSF had led to the dip in infiltration level.
Only last month, the Army Chief, Gen. N.C. Vij, had said the Army had foiled eight infiltration attempts in November itself.
That Pakistan has not stopped assisting terrorist groups operating in J& K and the North-east is also clear from continued terrorist violence in these parts of India. The day Sharma addressed his Press conference, two persons were killed and three injured in crossfire between troops and terrorists in Budgam district of J&K and 14 persons, including two members of the security forces, were wounded in blasts in Srinagar. Earlier, a staggering 348 kg of RDX, enough to trigger 50 powerful improvised explosive devices (IED), were recovered from a forest hideout in Anantnag district on November 25. it came in the wake of the recovery of another huge stock of 300 kg of the same explosives from the same district five days earlier. Since only governments can supply RDX explosives, it is not difficult to imagine from where the supplies came, and the purpose of storing them. The suggestion of malafides on the part of Pakistan that all this conveys, is reinforced if one recalls the death of two terrorists in an encounter with the security forces in Srinagar on November 17 barely a few hundred metres from where Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was to address his public meeting in Srinagar a couple of hours later. All this warrants the question whether Pakistan sincerely desires peace or is participating in the ongoing dialogue process to please the Americans and keep arms and financial aid from Washington flowing.
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