Thimphu, April 29: The prime ministers of India and Pakistan will sit down face-to-face Thursday, fuelling hopes of movement in the rival nations’ glacial progress towards resuming a substantial peace dialogue.
Despite scant expectation of any significant breakthrough, the mere fact that the two leaders have agreed to hold direct talks marks a step forward for a relationship that has been effectively frozen since the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani will meet on the sidelines of the eight-nation South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit under way in Thimphu, capital of the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan.
India broke off a peace dialogue with Pakistan after the Mumbai carnage in November 2008 that left 166 people dead.
Pakistani calls for a resumption have been repeatedly rebuffed by India, which insists that Islamabad has not done enough to bring the Pakistan-based militants it blames for the attacks to justice.
The official announcement that the two leaders would meet was brief and non-committal.
“It has been agreed through diplomatic channels that the prime ministers of India and Pakistan will hold a bilateral meeting at Thimphu on Thursday,” the Indian foreign ministry said in a statement.
Neither side offered any details of what might be on the agenda or how long the talks would last.
The last time Singh and Gilani sat down together was last July on the sidelines of a Non-Aligned Movement summit in Egypt.
That meeting ended with a joint statement that action on terrorism “should not be linked” to peace talks — a formula that saw Singh pilloried at home for undermining India’s insistence that Pakistan must first crack down on militant groups.
As a result, their next meeting at a summit on nuclear security in Washington earlier this month went no further than a handshake and a cursory exchange of pleasantries.
In between, the two sides managed a meeting between their senior foreign ministry officials in February, which resulted in little more than a vague pledge to keep the doors to dialogue open.
Observers believe the decision to talk in Thimphu was forced in part by the annoyance of other SAARC members who feel that Indo-Pakistan tensions have all too often blocked the organisation’s efforts to foster regional cooperation.
That sense of frustration was voiced on Tuesday by SAARC’s smallest member, the Maldives, whose president, Mohammed Nasheed, broke with protocol which traditionally precludes public mention of bilateral disputes.
“I hope neighbours can find ways to compartmentalise their differences while finding ways to move forward,” Nasheed said in his speech at the opening of the summit.
“I am of course referring to India and Pakistan. I hope this summit will lead to greater dialogue between them,” he said.
The bitter South Asian rivals have fought three wars since the subcontinent’s 1947 partition. They are currently locked in a struggle for influence in Afghanistan, which joined SAARC in 2007.
The organisation’s membership comprises Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
In an interview with the Press Trust of India in Thimphu on Wednesday, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said India’s insistence on delaying “meaningful” talks had “dragged on too long.”
He also suggested that Singh wanted to move the bilateral dialogue forward, but was constrained by domestic political considerations, including opposition within his own ruling Congress party.
“I think he is a well-meaning individual, he has a vision…. He understands the benefits that can accrue to the region if there is normalisation between two important players of the SAARC region,” Qureshi said.
“But it seems that elements within the Congress are not giving him the support he should be given,” he added.
The atmosphere leading up to the talks in Thimphu has also been soured by a spy scandal, with India announcing Monday that it had arrested a diplomat at its embassy in Islamabad on suspicion of passing secrets to the Pakistani intelligence services.
–Agencies