Clinton to visit Pakistan to push peace with India

ISLAMABAD: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will visit Pakistan next month, as Islamabad sees the Washington’s renewed interest in resumption of peace talks with Delhi as a positive sign.21_hillary_lg

‘We find it encouraging if a country that is friend to both Pakistan and India is helping in the process,’ said Foreign Office Spokesman Mr Abdul Basit at the weekly media briefing.

The US has launched renewed efforts for the resumption of the stalled Composite Dialogue between India and Pakistan. Ahead of Secretary Clinton’s maiden visit to the region, Undersecretary of State William Burns visited Delhi to push Indian leadership to resume dialogue with Pakistan, which it had suspended after last November’s Mumbai attack.

Although Secretary Clinton will have a heavy agenda in Delhi and Islamabad, India-Pakistan relations are likely to dominate.

US pressure has already begun paying dividends and a significant change in the Indian mood vis-à-vis ties with Pakistan is noticeable. Recent statements by Indian leadership including those by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, President Pratibha Patil and Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna are indicative of a shift in the Indian position.

Diplomats say there is a growing realization in Delhi as to how long it could sustain the policy of not talking to Islamabad particularly in the backdrop of the fact that the desired objectives of the talks’ suspension have not achieved their objectives and were rather hurting India’s own regional interests.

Besides, diplomats believe that India is cognizant of growing US pressure for the resumption of the peace process, and wants strained relations to start returning to normalcy soon, because it would not like the normalization to be perceived as a Washington driven initiative.

Islamabad is quite upbeat on the development.

Mr Basit explaining this said: ‘At this point in time our foremost priority is that our dialogue which was suspended after the Mumbai attack is resumed as quickly as possible.’

He was fully convinced by Prime Minister Singh’s assertion that talks between the two countries were important for resolving the issues confronting the two countries bilaterally and by the region as a whole.

As yet another indication of the thaw in the relations, the countries that earlier routinely accused each other of not cooperating in the Mumbai attack probe, have started acknowledging each other’s positive contributions to the investigations.

The spokesman said: ‘But both sides are cooperating and we are moving ahead with a constructive and positive mindset.’

Indian diplomats on the other hand in their private talk admit that they were ‘deeply impressed by the actions taken by Islamabad against the elements accused of perpetrating the Mumbai attack,’ notwithstanding the release of Jamaat-ud-Dawah chief Hafiz Saeed by Lahore High Court, which raised eye-brows across the world.

Delhi has recently provided translations of the information it provided last month to Islamabad in Marathi, which Pakistani legal and security experts found difficult to comprehend.

Despite all the indications of the two countries getting back to the negotiating table very soon, there is no planned meeting between President Zardari and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the sideline of the upcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit in Russia as being speculated by media.

However, the Foreign Office is not ruling out a ‘chance meeting’ between the two leaders.

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