Pak High Commissioner in Islamabad for `emergency' talks

Pak High Commissioner in Islamabad for `emergency' talks
JYOTI MALHOTRA & AGENCIES

NEW DELHI/ ISLAMABAD, JANUARY 7: Barely a week before the proposed visit of a Hurriyat Conference delegation to Pakistan, Islamabad's High Commissioner in New Delhi Ashraf Jehangir Qazi has rushed here for high-level ``emergency'' discussions, a media report said today. He is likely to meet Gen Pervez Musharraf today.

Qazi held talks with Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar and Foreign Affairs Secretary Inamul Haq and apprised them of talks he held with Hurriyat Conference Chairman Abdul Ghani Bhat in New Delhi, Jang reported today.

Foreign ministry sources said Qazi had held separate meetings with senior Indian leaders and Bhat over the last three days.

Qazi, who has arrived here to get ``fresh directives'' from the foreign office, attended a five-hour long meeting in the foreign ministry yesterday, the report said.

A high level meeting chaired by Sattar yesterday discussed the message of the Indian leadership that the Indian High Commissioner had brought with him after his recent visit and his meetings with Indian leadership. The participants of the meeting also worked out preliminary strategy regarding trilateral talks to solve the Kashmir issue.

Meanwhile, Pakistan President Rafiq Tarar has said the coming visit by a Hurriyat Conference delegation to Pakistan would pave the way for tripartite talks on the issue and asked India to adopt a ``positive'' attitude to the trip.

Asking India to allow the trip on January 15, Tarar told reporters in Lahore that Pakistan would welcome the team. ``Substantial progress has been made on the (Kashmir) issue,'' he said.

Alleging that India had ``so far been delaying the resolution of the Kashmir dispute on one pretext or another,'' Tarar said ``but now the entire world wants to settle the dispute as without it peace in the region is not possible.''

Meanwhile, India seems to have dropped its objections to a meeting with Musharraf on the margins of any international summit, but direct talks with Islamabad are unlikely to start until cross-border violence comes completely to an end.

Highly placed sources in the government said Prime Minister A B Vajpayee ``would not now go out of his way not to meet Gen. Musharraf'' and that such an encounter could well happen at the Commonwealth summit in Australia in September, or even earlier.

The sources pointed out that Vajpayee had ``deliberately gone out of his way'' not to meet the Pakistani military dictator at the UN General Assembly in New York last year. ``That will no longer happen,'' the sources said.

They pointed out that the PM's New Year vision statement made the same point and must not be misread. New Delhi's willingness to recommence dialogue at any level, including the highest level, came with the caveat that Pakistan create the conditions for talks, the sources said.

Short of the revival of dialogue, however, New Delhi seems to be quite happy to promote some officially-inspired, non-governmental diplomacy with Pakistan.

A high-powered team from the Delhi Policy Group, a think-tank on security affairs and foreign policy in the capital, is going to Islamabad next week on an invitation by an Islamabad-based institute, to have discussions on nuclear restraint and other strategic issues.

The team consists of former foreign secretary J.N. Dixit, ambassador K Shankar Bajpai (both have served as High Commissioners in Islamabad), former director-general of military operations, Gen. V R Raghavan, former air chief marshal O P Mehra, former admiral Raja Menon (a submariner who has written a widely acclaimed book called A Nuclear Strategy for India) and security affairs analyst Matin Zuberi.

Some of these people are currently members of the National Security Advisory Board and more than likely will be meeting senior officials in Musharraf's administration to test the waters in Islamabad.

Interestingly, the government seems to be placing considerable importance on the visit of this high-powered team. The fact that the ceasefire continues to hold, that Gen Musharraf has displayed his keenness to visit India to break the no-talks logjam, as well as the fact that New Delhi has realised the importance of appearing reasonable and conciliatory to the rest of the world vis-a-vis Islamabad, all contribute to the importance of this Track II diplomatic channel.

The government sources pointed out that the onus was on Islamabad to create the ``conditions'' for the resumption of official dialogue, that is cross-border violence must first end. They said that once the snows melted by March and the passes reopened, they would be able to properly assess the levels of infiltration into India.

Analysts also pointed out that if both countries could build faith over the next few months, the possibility of the revival of the SAARC summit need not be too far away.