New Delhi, December 2
Tuesday brought a mixed bag of developments on Indo-Pak relations as while on the one hand India proposed technical level talks on December 18-19 for the resumption of the “Samjhauta Express” train, on the other hand it shot down Pakistan’s sudden proposal of flying a delegation of Indian young businessmen from Islamabad to New Delhi in a special plane.
The first, and the positive, part of these developments was announced by Foreign Secretary Shashank at his maiden Press conference where he also said that resumption of dialogue with Pakistan would depend on the progress at the technical-level talks and how Islamabad meets its commitments to its unfulfilled agenda on SAARC-related issues.
What Mr Shashank did not talk about was an equally interesting development that occupied the attention of the foreign offices of the two countries today, well-placed sources said.
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, during his interaction in Islamabad with the visiting
delegation of some 100-odd young Indian businessmen on Sunday, had made a populist gesture that he would send them back to Delhi by a special plane.
Today the Pakistani diplomats got in touch with the Indian Foreign Office and asked for a one-off special permission for
the
proposed special plane to land in New Delhi.New Delhi shot down the proposal saying India went by rules and since the two countries had already decided to resume bilateral air links on reciprocal basis from January 1, it should stick to that, the sources said.
Pakistan-watchers here see Gen Musharraf’s gesture as typical of his Commando-style unilateralist diplomacy.
This gesture of Gen Musharraf is seen being at par with his remark made yesterday in an interview with BBC in which he had proposed Pakistan’s withdrawal of its 50,000 troops from POK provided India withdrew its 700000 soldiers from Jammu and Kashmir.
The Pakistan-watchers dismissed Gen Musharraf’s latest suggestion as clearly nothing but a gesture at grandstanding and confusing the issue and the people. They said there was nothing new in the latest proposal as since 1949 Pakistan had time to time make such suggestions.
When Mr Shashank was asked to respond to this statement of Gen Musharraf, he simply said it was not necessary to respond to each and every statement emanating from Islamabad.
Mr Shashank, in response to a question on Gen Musharraf reportedly expressing his readiness to meet Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on the margins of the SAARC Summit, said “The Prime Minister will go to Islamabad for the summit ...we will see who attends it from their side. Some meeting will take place but we will have to see the progress of technical level talks.”
Mr Shashank was non-committal on the question of when and at what level the two countries would formally begin dialogue now that things had started looking up in their bilateral ties and remarked that the level of talks would be decided “when we reach a suitable stage.”
He was equally non-committal on another question regarding Gen Musharraf’s remark that he would honour Mr Vajpayee with Pakistan’s highest civilian honour “Nishan-e-Pakistan” if concrete progress took place on the Kashmir issue.
