Pakistan High Commission To India – Abdul Basit

`Pakistan High Commissioner in New Delhi, Abdul Basit has expressed Pakistan’s willingness to hold dialogue with India on the sidelines of the Heart of Asia conference scheduled to be held next week in Amritsar, India. According to High Commissioner Basit, the schedule of the Advisor to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs, Sartaj Aziz, who is to attend that conference, is “not cast in stone and if there was an offer for talks from the host nation, then it would be accepted by Pakistan.” These remarks are a much needed reprieve from the recent point scoring that both sides have indulged in and they can potentially open up an opportunity to normalise relations. And the need to do just that is more urgent than ever before as constant ceasefire violations along the Line of Control is leading to loss of lives, both military and, in case of Pakistan, even civilian. Moreover, the vitriol that is coming from the Indian side, particularly Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s open proclamations of ‘diplomatically isolating’ Pakistan and his calls of revoking the Indus Water Treaty, in order to both distract his Punjabi voters from the real issues confronting them while at the same time making electoral capital out of it, has put Pakistan-India relations on a very precarious position.

`In these troubled times, an extraordinary level of statesmanship is required from the Pakistani leadership as navigating through this maze of accusations and bellicosity by India is a difficult task. In all of this, Pakistan must not get lost in the usual self-defeating cycle of accusations and counter-accusations, as that would merely amount to playing the game the way India wants it to be played. And what India wishes to gain through it is still unclear as all that has been achieved up till now is more hostility and an ever dwindling likelihood of meaningful bilateral engagement.

`To even the most casual observer of the Pakistan-India issue, one thing is abundantly clear: the imperative of dialogue for the resolution of issues. Perplexingly, however, an effective dialogue process is the one thing that has evaded Pakistan and India for most of their history. And now Pakistan and India are even struggling on agreeing to the terms on which dialogue should take place. Where Pakistan wants the issue of Kashmir to be, if not at the centre then, an important part of the dialogue process, India only wants dialogue to take place on the issue of cross border terrorism. How this has led to a stalemate is all too evident. Unless Pakistan and India move away from their intransigent positions on the terms of dialogue and cede some space to each other, this state of affairs is very unlikely to change.

`Important for the initiation of dialogue on the main bilateral issues is an atmosphere of a certain minimum level of amicability, which is hardly the case right now as mutual misgivings are glaringly at the forefront. One way to achieve this is to start dialogue on some of the less contentious issues first, such as the Sir Creek dispute. Through incrementally building trust, Pakistan and India can finally set the stage for the resolution of both the Kashmir dispute and cross border terrorism issue. And lasting resolution of these issues is the only way peace can be secured in South Asia. War mongering rhetoric may act as palliative remedy for the very real issues that the people of both countries are facing, but its transient nature is only matched by the illusory solution that it offers. The only way Pakistan and India can address the issues of its people is if they work towards making South Asia a cooperative neighbourhood.