Pak to revive 'backdoor diplomacy' with India to prevent incident related derailment of dialogue

Pakistan's federal government has decided to revive 'backdoor diplomacy' with India in order to ensure that the peace processes stay on track and are not derailed by any incident.

'Backdoor diplomacy', which refers to negotiations which take place away from the public glare was used by the two countries in the past in which the 2003 ceasefire agreement across the Line of Control was decided, the Express Tribune reports.

According to the report, a retired diplomat will soon be appointed to pursue the normalisation process with India through the backchannel with focus on continuation of peace talks despite any incident of unrest.

In former president Pervez Musharraf's regime Tariq Aziz and veteran Indian diplomat SK Lambah were engaged in secret diplomacy to find an out-of-the-box solution to the long standing Kashmir dispute.

A top foreign ministry official said that Indo-Pak relations are prone to accidents and the two nations need to develop mechanisms to ensure peace process is not derailed.

The official acknowledged the recent Nanga Parbat base attack on foreign tourists and said that the attacks had both 'internal and external dimensions'.

Former foreign secretary Shamshad Ahmed Khan said that the new government must not make any hasty decision on foreign policy issues, especially on ties with India adding that some issues can be discussed with backdoor diplomacy but issues such as Kashmir must not be discussed secretly, the report added.