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| Big stakes behind SM Krishna's visit to Pakistan | | | ABID SHAH
EARLY TIMES REPORT
NEW DELHI, July 12: External Affairs Minister SM Krishna is undertaking a two-day visit to Pakistan to meet his counterpart Shah Mehmood Qureshi in Islamabad. Krishna would leave for Pakistan on Wednesday and is expected to be back in New Delhi on Friday. Announcing this, the External Affairs Ministry issued a statement here today, saying "In pursuance of the mandate given by the Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan, during their meeting at Thimphu in April, 2010, to the Foreign Ministers and Foreign Secretaries of both the countries to work out the modalities of restoring trust and confidence in the relationship, thus paving the way for a substantive dialogue on issues of mutual concern, External Affairs Minister SM Krishna will visit Pakistan from July 14-16, 2010 for bilateral discussions at the invitation of Shah Mahmood Qureshi Foreign Minister of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan."
The statement is significant since it uses the term "substantive dialogue" instead of composite dialogue for which Pakistan has been insisting ever since this was suspended in the wake of 26/11 Mumbai attack in 2008. Yet, the fact that Krishna is visiting Pakistan signifies a thaw in the relationship of the two countries. Moreover, this is the first official visit of External Affairs Minister to Pakistan after the Mumbai attack for formal and official level bilateral talks. Though earlier Union Home Minister P Chidambaram had visited Pakistan and had met the top leaders of the neighbouring country but it was on the sidelines of the conference of Interior Ministers of SAARC countries and thus it did not have the status of official level talks between the two countries. Only the Foreign Secretaries of the two countries have met twice before. And this was said to be to prepare ground for the Minister-level interaction which is going to take place now. Earlier, Krishna had declined to comment whether Kashmir would be discussed in his talks with Pakistani officials, saying that the talks were supposed to be aimed at reducing trust deficit between the two neighbours and building confidence.
Yet, since Pakistan has consistently been hoisting Kashmir as an issue between India and Pakistan, the visit of Indian Foreign Minister to Pakistan would assiduously be watched both in South Asia and other world Capitals too in order to know that how far the two countries are able to bridge the gap in their quite diverse positions on this besides other issues. And as tempers run high in the Valley for now about a month where Pakistan backed separatist leaders have successfully been able to bring important towns of the region to a virtual standstill, Krishna's talks in Pakistan assume quite a bit of significance. Back home the question that the Government as well as the people both in Srinagar and Delhi face is whether Krishna's interaction with the higher ups of Pakistan would have a sobering effect on the Valley that is said to be on boil for weeks now. Besides this other important issues before the two countries are those related to reducing tension between India and Pakistan on the borders that have intermittently been seeing firing and the row over water that threatens to reach before international tribunal despite Indus Water Treaty between the two countries.
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