Skip to main content

India, Pakistan set talks ball rolling

Siddharth Varadarajan



THAW IN TIES: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari at a meeting in Yekaterinburg, Russia, on Tuesday.

Yekaterinburg: Terrorism was the “primary issue” five months ago when India suspended high-level interaction with Pakistan and remains so today. But Prime Minister Manmohan Singh broke the dialogue logjam on Tuesday, meeting President Asif Ali Zardari on the sidelines of the SCO summit here and agreeing that their Foreign Secretaries should discuss the T-word so that the two leaders could decide how to take the bilateral relationship forward when they meet again mid-July at the Nonaligned summit in Egypt.

With one eye presumably focused on those back home who might see the resumption of contact with Islamabad as a softening of India’s stand, Dr. Singh began what was meant to be a one-on-one meeting with Mr. Zardari in the full glare of the media which had gathered to capture the ‘photo-op.’ “I am very happy to meet you,” he told the Pakistani President after the two delegations had greeted each other and reporters, including this one, were still in the room clicking away.

“But I must tell you quite frankly that I have come with the limited mandate of discussing how Pakistan can deliver on its assurances that its territory would not be used for terrorist attacks on India.”

The message duly noted by the media, officials from both sides rushed to clear the room, leaving the two principals alone for their private interaction without note takers. “The Prime Minister does not do anything by chance,” a senior Indian official told The Hindu when asked if this departure from protocol was by design or happenstance.

Whatever its impact on domestic public opinion, Dr. Singh’s “public” airing of Indian concerns runs the risk of making Mr. Zardari’s life back home more difficult, though Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmud Qureshi took the awkwardness of the moment in his stride.
Asked whether he felt Dr. Singh’s remarks were acerbic, he told reporters he did not think so. “We all agree that we should condemn terrorism and fight against it, no matter where it comes from,” he said, adding, “Be it from India, Pakistan, Britain or Africa.”

In a statement issued after the meeting, Mr. Zardari’s spokesperson, Farhatullah Babar, said the “stalled peace process [had] got a fresh lease of life.” He omitted any reference to terrorism in describing the mandate of the proposed Foreign Secretary talks but said the Pakistani President had “reiterated the desire of [his] government to cooperate with India in bringing the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks to justice.”

Briefing the media about the 40-minute long meeting, Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon said the two leaders reviewed the bilateral relationship which “remains under considerable stress, the primary cause of which is the terrorist attacks on India from Pakistani territory.”

Source:www.hindu.com

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Kerala boat tragedy: Thirty five bodies have been fished out of the water

THEKKADY / KOCHI: A thick veil of grief descended on the famed tourist spot of Thekkady on Wednesday when Kerala witnessed its worst ever boat tragedy in the Mullaperiyar waters as the KTDC’s Jalakanyaka, carrying about 76 passengers, sank. Thirty five bodies have been fished out of the water. Any hope of finding more tourists alive faded with the daylight even as rescue personnel continued their desperate search. The two-deck boat, commissioned just a month back, was returning to the boat landing after an hour-long sight-seeing trip when tragedy struck. All the passengers on the upper deck apparently rushed to one side of the boat to take photos of a lone bison spotted on the shore. At the same time many from the lower deck flocked to the top leaving the lower almost empty. This movement and the uneven distribution of weight caused the boat to overbalance and turn turtle. Those remaining on the lower deck were trapped inside while about 20 on the upper deck were rescued by other boa

Special Status For Jammu & Kashmir Scraped: 5 Points About Article 370

Jammu & Kashmir will also be "reorganized," Home Minister Amit Shah said as talks about the state being trifurcated into three separate fields- Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh NEW DELHI: Article 370, which gives Jammu & Kashmir unique status, will be withdrawn this morning in parliament, Home Minister Amit Shah said . The announcement came after his cabinet meeting at his house this morning was held by Prime Minister Narendra Modi . Article 370 is a ' temporary provision ' granting special autonomous status to Jammu & Kashmir . It allows the state to draft its own Constitution and restricts the legislative powers of the parliament over the state. The government therefore requires state government approval for all legislation, except those related to defence, foreign affairs, finance, and communications. Parliament can not also improve or decrease the boundaries of the State under Article 370 As a consequence, citizens of Jammu & Kashmir

Enai Nokki Paayum Thotta Movie Review: Tiring and Unsatisfying

Movie Rating: 3/5 First of all things! The director's weakest film is the long delayed Enai Noki Paayum Thotta by Gautham Menon . The film's main weakness is the director's fascination with narrative style voice-over. It was good before Gautham used voice-over as a medium to tell his stories, but every scene in Enai Nokki Paayum Thotta begins and ends with Dhanush's voice-over, which irritates us after a point. The film is filled with tired stereotypes, and at a runtime of 157 minutes it is an unsatisfying watch. Like any other movie from Gautham Menon, here too hero Raghu (Dhanush) is a student of engineering, but this time his wife is not a student, but a film heroine Lekha ( Mega Akash ).She tells him she is not interested in movies and her boss Kuberan (Senthil Veeraswamy) coerced her into the profession for money (it looks like the girl is an orphan and Kuberan supported her studies and is her guardian). Raghu takes her to his Pollachi house and introduc