Pak promises a robust response to Indian move

Apparently resentful of India's first strike unilateral confidence-building measures (CBMs) that Pakistan interpreted as aimed at notching up brownie points with the international community, Islamabad today said the world should expect a "robust" and "constructive response from it to India's unilateral confidence building proposals" but made no commitments on the plea that its responses were being studied by Gen Pervez Musharraf.

Pak newspaper Dawn had reported on Sunday that Islamabad would announce its response to 12 CBMs announced by India on the eve of Diwali, today.

But at a press conference, Islamabad chose to react only to the dates proposed by India for technical talks on restoring civil aviation links earlier in the day (two sets of dates""November 3 and 4 or November 10 and 11""in New Delhi). It said it would consider the dates and get back to India. On all other CBMs it deferred a response.

Instead, Islamabad was both pessimistic and dismissive about the measures announced by India. On the dates for civil aviation talks, foreign office spokesman Masood Khan said Pakistan would respond appropriately to the dates.

However, he reminded reporters that the first round of civil aviation talks on August 28 in Rawalpindi had failed to yield any outcome because Pakistan had sought guarantees from India ("abiding commitment") to ensure that overflight was not banned again.

"The general thrust is that we are not running down the proposals. As a matter of fact we said we were going to consider these proposals seriously. We shall give a robust response. The response will be constructive," Khan said.

Foreign Secretary Riaz Khokhar was supposed to have formally unveiled Islamabad's response today, a report in Dawn had said.

Khan turned over his press conference today to criticising Indian leaders for making the proposals that were "nothing new".

Khan said the proposals were actually made by Pakistan Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali in May. Indirectly calling Defence Minister George Fernandes a "psychopath and war monger", Khan derided the proposals as "rehashed and recycled".

Khan said some Indian proposals like resuming air and rail links, increase of staff strengths of the high commissions in New Delhi and Islamabad as well as establishing contacts between the Coast Guard of the two countries on the likes of the director-generals of military operations were made by Jamali, in response to peace offer by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

"We welcome their proposals. But they were announced with lot of fanfare as if they were part of new initiative by the Indian leadership, which was objectionable," he said.

Khan directed his ire against Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha and Defence Minister George Fernandes for making it appear that the proposals were a ploy to win the world opinion. He Pointed out that "the core issue of Kashmir, Siachen, peace and security issues are not in the package".

"Many signals" were given by New Delhi while announcing the dozen proposals, he said adding that "Pakistan had been excluded from the offer of dialogue with the Hurriyat".

Pakistan's criticism of the measures means that Indian hard-liners like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, who had been critical of the PM for reaching out to hold a dialogue will be further emboldened to trash the initiative and press for more aggressive action against Pakistan.