June 2nd 2003
Defence Minister George Fernandes upgraded India-Pakistan contacts a notch by stating in Singapore that the recent warming of ties with Islamabad could lead to a summit between the leaders of the two nations.
“There is a slow movement upward, but a very definite movement toward a summit,” Fernandes said at an Asian security conference in Singapore.
Fernandes said there had been a “positive response” from Islamabad and the international community to recent Indian peace moves. “We are currently in the process of confidence-building,” he said. “So it's something very, very positive that is happening in the sub-continent.”
Fernandes’ statement confirms Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha’s assertion made last week that India and Pakistan had a roadmap for talks.
Clearly, both Operation Sarp Vinash on the Indian side, which comprised busting a transit point used by militants in the Surankot jungles in Jammu and Kashmir and the warning issued by the Pak establishment to militant groups to wind up their Kashmir operations by May 31, have had a salutary effect on the Indian political leadership’s optimism about the Indo-Pak peace initiative.
Sources in the defence ministry as well as the external affairs say the next big moves on Indo-Pak relations could be made during Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani’s visit to the US on June 7, followed by Pakistan President Gen Pervez Musharraf's meeting with US President George Bush at Camp David on June 24.
Musharraf's meeting, according to Pak newspapers, will see Pakistan raise the issue of the reported sale of the Phalcon (AWAC) spy planes to India by Israel. The Phalcon incorporates a missile called Green Pine that has been developed by Israel using American funding.
The US had been objecting to the sale of the plane and the missile technology to India, on the grounds that it would be a dangerous move in nuclearised South Asia.
That Gen Musharraf is going to raise this issue in precisely the same terms is going to put the US in an awkward position.
However, other confidence-building moves between India and Pakistan are encouraging. An India-Pakistan one-day cricket match is being planned for September in both New Delhi and Islamabad and a Pakistan visit by Indian parliamentarians to reciprocate the India trip by Pak MPs is also on the cards.
Officials will meet on 3 June, to discuss how the bus service between the two nations can be re-launched. Although Islamabad is yet to respond to India’s move on reciprocal basis, New Delhi is finalising the details of putting back the service that had been snapped on December 31, 2001, 18 days after the attack on Parliament.
The meeting of officials of the external affairs ministry, the Delhi government and the Delhi Transport Corporation would discuss, among other things, the feasibility of using the two buses which were plying on the route before the service was snapped, sources said.
