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As with much in the Pakistan-India relationship, even the welcome news is often accompanied by bad news. On Friday, the Indian government announced that Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar will be dispatched to Saarc countries, with the focus inevitably being on speculation that the foreign secretary-level talks cancelled by India last August are now back on track.
Then, yesterday, another round of violence along the Line of Control resulted in the death of a Pakistani sexagenarian in firing by Indian border forces.
The up-and-down nature of mere expectations that India and Pakistan will begin to approach the idea of talks again indicates just how far from the path to normalization the two countries have strayed.
As ever, there are two sides to the story. In the current Nawaz Sharif-Narendra Modi era, a great deal of responsibility for the impasse must be borne by the Indian side.
Seemingly determined to take a tough, almost belligerent, line with Pakistan, the Modi government appears to have been in denial of a basic reality of the Pak-India relationship — as frustrating as it is for both sides to deal with each other, deal with each other they must.
The decision to call off talks last August was a particularly petulant one, given that the Pakistan high commissioner to India, Abdul Basit, did nothing unusual — in fact, it was fairly routine — in meeting the leadership of the Hurriyat Conference.
Moreover, the simmering tensions along the Line of Control and Working Boundary for much of the last year can be largely explained by the Indian government adopting an explicitly disproportionate approach in responding to any trouble in the area.
Even now, the imminent visit of Mr Jaishankar is being cast by the Indian government as a so-called Saarc yatra — indicating that India is not keen on doing anything more than the bare minimum. If it is true that US President Barack Obama nudged Prime Minister Modi to reach out to Pakistan, it seems Mr Modi is sending a message that he is neither very keen on it nor very hopeful.
For all the problems on the Indian side,
however, there is another basic reality too: Pakistan has simply not done enough to engage India on the matters that are of concern to it.
Two big issues stand out:
failure to get anywhere near a closure on the Mumbai-related trials here and shelving the Non-Discriminatory Market Access deal with the previous Congress government. Surely, for all of India’s sullenness and petulance, it is Pakistan’s inability to approach the Pak-India equation in a cooperative manner that is undermining the prospects of a return to dialogue.
India has legitimate security concerns regarding Pakistan, as does Pakistan with India, but it is unreasonable on the part of the Pakistani state to not even do the basic things that could help pave the way for a meaningful resumption of dialogue.
Long way to peace - Newspaper - DAWN.COM
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