Hour-long meeting between two PMs turns out to be satisfactory
The ghost of Sharm-el Sheikh has finally been buried. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistan counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani have managed to bring back the troubled bilateral relationship on track at Thimphu.
India has agreed to resume the dialogue process with its neighbour, at the foreign minister and foreign secretary levels, in exchange for the promise by Islamabad to bring the Mumbai terror accused to a “speedy trial” and renew its commitment not to allow its territory to be used for any “terrorist activity” against India, Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao said here today.
As the two prime ministers concluded their meeting, lasting over an hour, a glow of mutual satisfaction seemed to unusually connect both camps, stuck in the rut of mutual suspicion and antagonism since the Mumbai terror attacks of November 2008.
Rao’s briefing to journalists, in fact, was wholly characterised by the positive adjective: “Dialogue is the only way forward… The foreign ministers and the foreign secretaries are now charged with working out modalities of restoring trust and paving the way for substantive dialogue on all issues of mutual concern,” she said.
“We need to restore mutual trust and confidence… The focus is on charting the way forward. The searchlight is on the future, not on the past,” Rao added.
She said both sides would meet as soon as possible to discuss modalities on the return to dialogue.
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Manmohan Singh, keenly aware that India, as well as the rest of the world, was focusing on the outcome of his encounter with Gilani, used the meeting to stress the need to end the “terror machine” within Pakistan which Pakistan should address “comprehensively”.
In turn, Gilani accepted that the “intention” in Pakistan was to complete the trials against the Mumbai accused as soon as possible. He reiterated that Pakistan was an equal victim of terror and promised, once again, that his government would not allow Pakistani territory to be used for anti-India terror.
A clear sign of Pakistan’s happiness with the meeting was its Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, who told reporters that, “we did not expect to come out of the meeting in such a positive frame of mind”.
Clearly, the prime minister also knew that despite the long shadow of the Sharm-el Sheikh encounter less than a year ago, he would need to dig deep within India’s own resources, not only to take the dialogue forward in a manner which would allow Pakistan to also declare victory, but also to extract a commitment to speed up the Mumbai terror trial and end terror from the Pakistan prime minister.
“The PM was very emphatic that Pakistan has to act on terrorism. The ‘terror machine’ as he called it, needed to be controlled,” Rao said.
By delicately framing the quid pro quo, that is, a return to dialogue in exchange for a firm commitment to demolish the terror machine — with the Americans employing their persuasive powers over the Pakistani establishment, while remaining in the shadows — the prime minister knew it was up to him to publicly strengthen Gilani so that he could, back home in Pakistan, get the backing of the powerful Pakistani army to deliver on the end to anti-India terrorism.
Highly placed sources with knowledge of the meeting said Singh had decided that he would have a “free and frank exchange of views” with Gilani, discuss all issues in the relationship over the years, including on Jammu & Kashmir and Siachen. This included the conversations both sides had during the Musharraf years on Kashmir and terrorism, the sources said.
By bringing Musharraf into their conversation, a former Pakistan army chief who was also the benefactor of Pakistan’s current army Chief General Ashfaq Kayani, Singh was signalling that the Pakistan army had already been on board the resolution of the various India-Pakistan disputes, including terrorism and the Kashmir issue, the sources added.
Clearly, the success of the Thimphu meeting was critical for both sides. For a start, both sides needed to declare victory to their domestic audiences. For Singh, this meant an erasure of the dark shadow cast by Sharm-el Sheikh last year, when the introduction of the “Balochistan” word into the joint statement created merry hell for Singh and the Congress party in Parliament. It meant an end to the Opposition charge that the prime minister was being soft with Pakistan on terrorism, and on the ground, that Pakistan was taking serious action against the Mumbai terror accused.
For Pakistan, it meant a return to dialogue with India, which India had stubbornly refused to do unless Islamabad took key action against the Mumbai terror accused. Pakistan agreed to drop the term “composite dialogue” which India didn’t like — and in exchange, got the dialogue raised to the political, foreign minister’s level.
In the end, Balochistan was not even named — thereby giving Singh a second life when he returns to Parliament on Monday.
Significantly, the delicately framed quid pro quo — speedy action against the Mumbai terror accused and an end to terror in return for a wide-ranging political dialogue that addresses all issues — is a reminder of the January 2004 statement signed in Islamabad by former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and then President Pervez Musharraf. At the time, National Security Adviser Shiv Shanker Menon was India’s high commissioner to Pakistan.
Clearly, Singh is hoping that the BJP-led Opposition will not be able to criticise the Thimphu meeting between Gilani and him, as they did the one at Sharm-el Sheikh.
Perhaps, part of the push was provided by the free and frank discussions the leaders of the other Saarc countries had with the leaders of India and Pakistan, led by Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed, telling both of them to resolve their contentious issues, so that the entire region could get a move on.