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| Islamabad bombing its tribal belt, asking New Delhi to give freehand to Kashmiri separatists | | | RUSTAM
EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, June 25: The Foreign Secretaries of India and Pakistan met at Islamabad on Thursday. The outcome of the talks was on expected lines. It was expected that Islamabad would again rake up the Kashmir issue and it did exactly that. It was also expected that New Delhi would rake up the issue of cross border terrorism and it did ask Islamabad to stop cross-border terrorism. The Indian Foreign Secretary did tell her Pakistani counterpart that if Islamabad really wishes to normalize relations with India, it has no other option but to rein in and neutralize all the Pakistan-based terrorists and extremists.
It was also expected that the Indian Foreign Secretary would ask Pakistan to help India bring to justice the culprits of the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attacks. The Indian Foreign Secretary did rake up this important issue. It was also expected that both the Foreign Secretaries would reiterate the stand that dialogue between the two countries is the only way forward and that steps need to be taken to bridge the trust deficit. Fair enough. Both the countries need to surmount the problems of bilateral nature.
However, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that it was Islamabad that not only held its ground firmly, but also crossed the line by asking India to reduce "troops from the border" and withdraw what it called the "draconian" laws from Kashmir. It is also difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Indian Foreign Secretary again failed India by not putting things in right perspective. She should have plainly told her Pakistani counterpart that Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan are the Indian territories and that if Islamabad sincerely wishes to normalize relations, it has not only to stop cross-border terrorism and destroy the terror-producing factories, but also to handover to India the Indian territories, which have been under the illegal occupation of Pakistan since 1947-48. Had she talked of the February 1994 national resolve, Pakistan would have been on the defensive. By not taking up this issue of national import with Islamabad, the Indian Foreign Secretary only indicated that New Delhi has neither the will nor the capacity to take back from Pakistan its own territories.
But no one should accuse the Indian Foreign Secretary of ignoring the national resolve. She did what she had been told to do by the Prime Minister's Office, whose stand on Jammu and Kashmir has all along been as ambiguous as it has always been dumb-founding and disturbing. The Prime Minister's Office has at no point of time during all these 63 years of the state's otherwise legal accession to India done anything concrete to tell the world community that Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India to the same extent as all other states of the Union. On the contrary, its actions have created an impression across the world that Jammu and Kashmir is a disputed territory and that its political future is yet to be determined.
It is hoped that good sense would finally prevail and New Delhi will take all the steps calculated to not only integrate this part of the state fully into India, but also to reintegrate the Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan into India. Such an action on the part of New Delhi is imperative. India is not a banana republic. India is a sovereign state in the real sense of the term and the Indians want New Delhi to assert its authority and behave in the manner the sovereign states, including Pakistan, China, United States, Sri Lanka and Israel, behave.
It needs to be noted that all the Indians, barring a handful of mercenaries, believe that they are a nation; that the Indian nation is sovereign like any other nation in the world; that India has definite borders; that the Indian government has its own foreign policy - foreign policy designed to defend and promote further its geo-political and economic interests - and that India has a definite land area. The rulers in New Delhi just can't afford to ignore what the Indian nation believes in. They simply have to behave in the fashion the Late Indira Gandhi behaved in 1971 and she behaved in a fashion that not only led to the division of Pakistan and emergence of Bangladesh out of it as an independent and sovereign country, but also forced the over 90,000 Pakistani soldiers, including generals, to raise hands and surrender before the mighty and rapidly advancing Indian Army. It was no wonder then that she was hailed even by her political opponents as "Durga". The Indian nation wants "Durga" and not those who have little or no regard for the Indian territory and the Indian borders or those who think in terms of rendering the Indian borders irrelevant and porous. (To be continued)
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