PM's peace initiative gets cautious approval

On Thursday, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made a few phone calls. To Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and a couple of other cabinet colleagues, and one to National Security Advisor Shiv Shankar Menon, to inform them he was inviting the two top leaders of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari and Yousuf Raza Gilani, to Mohali to watch the India-Pakistan match next week.

“He was not asking us. He was telling us. And, I think all of us told him what a good idea it was,” a Cabinet minister told Business Standard. “After all, if we had decided to keep Pakistan engaged, what better occasion than this?”

Gilani has accepted the invitation. Interior Minister Rehman Malik will also be coming, with a large entourage.

In 2009, the PM and Gilani met at Sharm al Sheikh (Egypt) and issued a joint statement which mentioned ‘activities’ in Balochistan. It sparked outraged disbelief in India, at the ‘sell out’, and on resuming a dialogue so soon after the Mumbai attacks. An unwary Prime Minister had a vigorous attack launched on him and Menon, the then Foreign Secretary, took the fall for ‘errors of drafting’.

There’s been more care this time. A previously scheduled meeting of the National Security Advisory Board will meet the PM tomorrow and give him the benefit of its collective wisdom, on the events in West Asia/North Africa, in Japan, and also on Pakistan. It is to ensure another seal of endorsement by India’s civil society, on a move that will be one more step in normalisation of relations with Pakistan.

The off-the-field India-Pakistan encounter will get as many eyeballs, if not more, than the on-the-field match. As unilateralism goes, India has already won the match by extending the invitation. More, it comes at a time when the ‘full spectrum dialogue’, as Pakistan calls it, is just starting. Home Secretaries of the two countries will meet on Monday and Tuesday. Irritants remain. But since Mumbai, India has not seen a single instance of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. New Delhi has gone the extra mile by appointing the Kashmir interlocutors, who have discussed issues that were taboo for the Indian state, such as autonomy, freely with Kashmiri militant groups.

The foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan met in Bhutan on February 6 and, four days later, both sides announced they had agreed to resume peace talks on all issues suspended after the November 26, 2008, terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

It was also agreed that prior to the Pakistani foreign minister’s visit to India later this year, both sides would conclude official-level meetings on counter-terrorism (including progress in the Mumbai trial); humanitarian issues; peace and security, including confidence-building measures; Jammu and Kashmir; promotion of friendly exchanges; Siachen; economic issues; Wullar barrage/Tulbul navigation project; and Sir Creek. Ahead of the Home Secretaries’ meeting, India has loosened visa conditions for divided families visiting from Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. In the rarefied environs of the home ministry, where hurricanes hardly happen, no dramatic outcomes should be expected. It is in Mohali that the drama will unfold, arclights and all.

Even Bharatiya Janata Party president Nitin Gadkari has welcomed the invitation. “It’s the culture of our county. The government has invited them and we are not displeased at the invitation extended to them to watch cricket,” he said at a press conference in Ranchi today.