Just three days after the India-Pakistan Foreign Secretaries talks on the sidelines of Heart of Asia conference, the retired diplomats of the two countries got together on Friday at a conference to find a way to break the deadlock between India-Pak relations. The conference was attended by former High Commissioners of the two countries who have served in India and Pakistan since Independence.
The Indian delegation consisted of K Shankar Bajpai, SK lambah, Shivshankar Menon, Satish Chandra, Satyabrata Pal, G Parthasarathy, TCA Raghavan, Sharat Sabharwal, and K Natwar Singh while the Pakistani side had Salman Bashir, Aziz Ahmad Khan, Humayun Khan, Riaz H Khokhar, Shahid Malik and Ashraf Jehangir Qazi. The meeting organised by the Ananta Aspen Centre, a think tank headed by lambah, was part of Track-II initiative planned by the Prime Ministers of two countries during their meeting in Ufa (Russia) in July 2015. The discussion on Friday was first of the series planned by the two sides.
The diplomats favoured keeping Indo-Pak talks away from public glare and restoring trust in each other for its success. They also favoured resolving long pending disputes. “The relationship between India and Pakistan has never been incident free. We are at a cross-road where we don’t know whether the relations will progress forward or regress, as has happened in the past. In such a situation it is important to restore trust,” said Ashraf JehangirQazi.
In the context of Pathankot attack and recent visit of Joint Investigation Team, Shivshankar Menon said India was getting mixed signals from Pakistan and the broader question of terrorism looms large.
The diplomats also raised questions on the arrest of alleged Indian spy Kulbhushan Jadhav with former Pak envoy to India Salman Bashir saying contact between the NSAs can help contain explosion of incidents like Pathankot and in case of Jadhav both sides should cooperate in investigation. He added that a lot of work was done during the UPA regime which needs to be revived.
“If you suspend the FS talks just because the High Commissioner has met the Hurriyat leaders would show that all that was done on the back channel side, have been lost. That gives us a bit of unease as you are not quite sure where this government wants to take the relationship with Pakistan,” Bashir, the former FS of Pak said.
G Parthasarathy said the public opinion at present is not in favour of Pakistan and PM Modi has no political space to move, hence talks should be kept away from media glare. S K lambah said dialogue with Pakistan cannot progress unless there is peace on the border, no terrorism, an early resolution of 26/11 trials.
