Sharif, Karzai come with agenda

While Sharif wants to resume the composite India-Pak dialogue, Karzai wants to push for an arms deal

Even as India is officially terming Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s talks with all the visiting South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) leaders and Mauritius as ‘courtesy meetings’, Pakistan and Afghanistan are here with a formal agenda for the dialogues scheduled on Tuesday.  The duration of each meeting with a visiting head of government has been kept at 20-30 minutes. The talks will be at the sprawling Hyderabad House, near the city's centre, close to India Gate.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan has come to urge resumption of the composite dialogue which got stalled under the former government, resolution of the Jammu & Kashmir issue and establishment of a normal trade and investment relationship.

After arriving here early on Monday morning, Sharif said he’d brought a “message of goodwill and good wishes from Pakistan”. Sources told Business Standard his main objective is resumption of the earlier composite dialogue, wishing to build on the relationship he enjoyed in 1999 with the government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

As a softener, the Pakistan government had announced the release of 151 fishermen who were languishing in jail there (for straying into Pakistan waters), in addition to 57 fishing boats.

Both nuclear-armed neighbours are expected to assess how much each can trust each other and whether “it will be a relationship which will be workable or not,” diplomatic sources said. They added Sharif would ask for the release of Pakistan inmates of Indian jails.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, whose term in office is to end soon, is here to push for an arms deal to help strengthen his military, through an enhanced pact on weaponry. He had been urging this for over two years with Delhi. Karzai, sources said, is keen to secure the deal before stepping down as President;  the country heads for a second round of elections next month. Karzai will be the first one to hold talks with Modi on Tuesday.

Peace talks between the two countries had got stalled due to a series of ceasefire violations that included killing of soldiers on the border. In January 2013, Pakistan soldiers had also beheaded an Indian soldier.

There is also pressure from the US on both the countries to salvage ties in the backdrop of NATO troops' pullout from Afghanistan by the end of this year.