Ahead of the proposed meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif in New York, members of India’s ‘Strategic Community’ on Friday said that Singh should boycott the dialogue which is scheduled for September, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting. Further, they urged the Government to abandon its appeasement policy towards Pakistan and rather stay alert on the neighbouring country's ‘strategic depth’.
Strategists opined that the Sharm-el-Sheikh declaration and the composite dialogue process were the two by-products of the Kargil war and the Parliament attack. "The prolonged appeasement policy carried out by India has been nothing, but a failure. This policy, in the form of composite dialogue, has made Pakistan to conclude that India cannot initiate firm action against those perpetrating terrorism from Pak soil, and that terrorism and dialogue can go hand-in-hand. It's high time we make a new policy which represents us of possessing a firm and assertive stand on national security issues," said G Parthasarathy, former Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan. These two off-shoots have emboldened the Pakistan establishment to stall, obfuscate and delay actions against the perpetrators and masterminds of the 26/11 terrorist attack, he added.
"Good intentions are not sufficient to create conditions for productive negotiations," warned the members of the committee demanding real concrete actions from the Government. Keeping in view the recent attack on the Indian High Commission in Afghanistan, former Director of Intelligence Bureau (IB) Ajit Doval said, "The Government should not assume that the new Pak PM, Nawaz Sharif, is committed to improving ties with India. Our Consulate in Jalalabad has been subject to a terrorist attack for the first time, raising serious questions about the timing. This was followed by the highly provocative killing of five Indian soldiers inside our territory in Jammu and Kashmir, a couple of days ago. Also, Sharif had earlier promised to expedite the trial of those accused of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks and grant India MFN status, but none of them have been kept."
Till now, 57 incidents of border violations have been recorded this year, informed the committee. Moreover, both infiltration by terrorists and ceasefire violations on the loC have increased by more than 80 per cent since last year. "The Government must develop a national consensus on issues of national security, counter-terrorism and defense preparedness, de-linking them from electoral politics. Ill-advised attempts and measures to denigrate and undermine the functioning of vital institutions like the Army and IB through motivated assertions and leaks to the media are a cause of serious concern. These inflict incalculable damage on vital security institutions and systems, and on the morale of the personnel concerned," said Satish Chandra, former Deputy National Security Advisor.
Speaking on Pakistan's nuclear power, the panelists said, "There is nothing called Pakistan's nuclear weapons as their entire nuclear programme is done by China. Moreover, India does not possess any nuclear threat from Pakistan as the latter is a smaller nation geographically. The size of Pak will act as a deterrent for them," maintained General NC Vij, former Chief of Army Staff. Former Secretary of RAW AK Verma, former Home Secretary Dhirendra Singh, former Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal and former Vice Chief of Naval staff Vice Admiral KK Nayyar, were among the other panelists in the discussion.