Pakistan high commissioner to India Abdul Basit, while responding to questions at a New Delhi media meet on Thursday, declared that the Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue between the two countries could be treated as “suspended” for now. In elaboration, he noted that the Kashmir issue hadn’t received attention and that India was seeking to create “unrest” in Pakistan — a reference to a retired Indian naval officer, now a businessman, being abducted in Iran and paraded as an Indian spy in Pakistan recently.
The envoy also accused India of suspending foreign secretary talks. Whether Mr Basit exceeded his brief is unclear. But he had hardly finished speaking when the Pakistan foreign ministry spokesman declared that the countries were “in contact” on the issue of their foreign secretaries getting together. This has been the exact formulation for the past three months when the Pathankot terrorist attack took place, jolting the incipient peace process formally set in motion by external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj on December 9 last year.
But, in order to be helpful, the Narendra Modi government permitted Pakistan to send a joint investigation team to visit Pathankot to gather forensic evidence in hopes that as a reciprocal gesture, Islamabad would facilitate the visit of India’s National Investigation Agency to Pakistan. Even if the tenor and the meaning of the Pakistan high commissioner’s observations and that country’s foreign office statement are different in their direction, it is evident that there is either confusion or ambivalence in Islamabad on seeking to restore normal relations with India at the present juncture.
Some here explain that as sharpening of conflict in civil-military relations in Pakistan. Even if it is just that, it would appear that Prime Minister Modi’s gambit of giving a push to normalising ties with Pakistan has received a pushback from the Pakistani side. The PM’s sudden landing in Lahore last December to demonstrate his intention of seeking peace with Pakistan now stands especially exposed as an exercise in personalised diplomacy which is not rooted in the coordinates of reality on the ground.
With the chief Pakistani diplomat in New Delhi adopting a hard posture, the leeway in relations has shrunk. This could also be an indicator of an attempt at a strong Pakistan-aided militant push in Kashmir in the coming days. The government’s mishandling of the situation at NIT in Srinagar can conceivably aid anti-India tendencies in the Valley. The government must re-orient its posture.
