Islamabad, July 16 (IANS) India and Pakistan Friday pondered over the future of their bilateral dialogue as the much-awaited talks between the foreign ministers ended without any breakthrough but with only a pledge to keep talking.
Indian and Pakistani officials privately blamed one another for the manner the nearly seven hours of dialogue between S.M. Krishna and Shah Mahmood Qureshi concluded minus the trust it had been expected to build.
While Pakistani officials insisted that India was unwilling to look at some of its ‘core concerns’, New Delhi accused Islamabad of shifting its goalposts even during the day-long discussions at the foreign ministry here.
One Indian source said that Pakistan was unwilling to give a time-frame to act against the Pakistani masterminds and others involved in the 2008 Mumbai terror attack, without which the two countries would never be able to go ahead.
Pakistan also wanted India to revive the joint mechanism against terrorism that was put in cold storage after the Mumbai killings by Pakistani terrorists that left 166 people dead.
‘We told them that we were ready for everything provided we were told by when Pakistan would act’ against Lashkar-e-Taiba founder Hafiz Saeed, the Mumbai mastermind who continues to blow hot and cold against India at public rallies.
Indian officials said that Saeed was not their only concern though. ‘There are others too against whom we had given solid leads but there was no movement on that,’ said one official.
And while India maintained that the situation in Jammu and Kashmir and the killings of civilians by security forces were its internal matter, Pakistan disagreed and sought to question New Delhi on ‘human rights violations’ and even the imposition of curfew in parts of the Kashmir Valley.
India also felt that Pakistan’s demand that it should be allowed to talk to the magistrate and others who questioned the captured Pakistani terrorist in Mumbai, Ajmal Amir Kasab, was a mere diversionary tactic.
‘There was no sense in that request,’ said the Indian official. ‘We told them that they should be satisfied with authenticated documents of Kasab’s confessions.’
India also dismissed accusations of involvement in the unrest in Balochistan, Pakistan’s biggest and most backward province, with Krishna stating openly that Islamabad had not provided even a ‘shred of evidence’ to back its allegations.
Pakistan desperately wanted the resumption of the composite dialogue process that began in 2004 but was broken off after Mumbai.
The talks Thursday took place in phases, with Krishna breaking away in the evening to call on President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.
While the discussions were on, Indian officials sought to give the impression that everything was on track. But by the time Krishna and Qureshi came at 9 p.m. to address a crowded gathering of mostly Indian and Pakistani journalists, some of who had been waiting since noon, it was clear all was not well.
However, despite the accusations and counter-accusations, the two sides made it clear they would not break off their engagement.
Krishna said he had invited Qureshi to New Delhi, in the clearest indication that India and Pakistan would keep talking despite refusing to give up their known positions on conflicting issues.
‘We had cordial, frank and useful exchange of views,’ Krishna told journalists, adding that Thursday’s talks had helped the two countries ‘to develop a better understanding’.
Qureshi too told a Pakistani journalist that it would be wrong to conclude that ‘nothing has come out of this meeting’. He added: ‘Let us not forget history. Let us forget impediments that have come between us.
‘(But) we are politicians, and politicians believe in dialogue. We will extract hope even out of hopelessness.’
(M.R. Narayan Swamy can be contacted at narayan.swamy@ians.in)
