With prime minister Narendra Modi setting ground rules for restarting bilateral talks and Pakistani leader Sartaj Aziz admitting "poor timing" of calling Hurriyat leaders for a meeting, interlocutors in both countries now see a possibility of a meeting between Modi and his counterpart Nawaz Sharif, on the sideliners of the SAARC summit in Kathmandu in November.
The two-day 18th SAARC summit will be inaugurated on November 26. The dates were circulated by the SAARC secretariat based in Kathmandu recently to other member countries, which include Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
While addressing the UN General Assembly session as well as during his interaction at the Council for Foreign Relations at New York, prime minister Modi underscored his readiness to restart bilateral talks with Pakistan, but insisted that such negotiations must be held "without a shadow of terrorism". What has gone well here with diplomats is that without attacking Islamabad, Modi has conveyed his message well, even when questioning Sharif for highlighting the Kashmir issue in his own UN speech a day earlier. "By raising this (Kashmir issue), I don't know how serious our effort will be, and some people are doubtful," Modi said."Instead, today we should be thinking about the victims of floods on Jammu and Kashmir," the prime minister said.
Sartaj Aziz, foreign policy advisor to Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif, told an Indian news channel, that the timing of the meeting between Pakistan high commissioner to India and the Hurriyat leaders was not right and it could have been avoided. Indian government called off foreign secretary-level talks with Pakistan in August after their envoy in Delhi, Abdul Basit, met Hurriyat leaders on the eve of the dialogue. Sources said Pakistan has conveyed India through back-channels that if India had conveyed their opposition and reservations about this meeting in advance, there was possibility to postpone them. But Pakistani sources insist that there was no question calling them off permanently. "They could be put off till substantive discussions on Kashmir could begin between the two countries. Right now the challenge is to put on table a mechanism to sustain dialogue," diplomatic sources told dna. As soon as separatist leader Shabir Shah had arrived at Pakistan high commission, the foreign secretary, Sujatha Singh, rang up Pakistani envoy Abdul Basit, saying the talks have been called off. "It was not possible to cancel our meetings at that time, when they had already begun," they said.
Last time it was only in 2005 when both countries had substantive discussions on the issue of Jammu and Kashmir, which had later resulted in a near peace deal, which went haywire due to then President Pervez Musharraf making way for a different setup in Islamabad. Later Mumbai train bombings in 2006 and finally 26/11 attacks buried it.
Official sources here said the ground rules set by Modi are to help Pakistan's economy by trade concessions, but use tougher means on security issues. Recently external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj put it out that Islamabad now needs to adjust to the fact that India has a new government and a new foreign policy.
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