As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and visiting President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai focus on regional security in their talks tomorrow, Pakistan will inevitably loom large.

Whether it is in rooting out the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda, whose resurgence threatens the Afghan political future, or curbing the Kashmir militants operating from Pakistani soil, Karzai and Singh would have a lot of notes to exchange on where President Musharraf’s policies are headed.

The strategic challenge before Singh and Karzai, however, is to find a way of drawing Musharraf into a mutually beneficial framework of regional cooperation. A simple way of launching it would be an early three-way summit meeting between the leaders.

Amidst rising political discord between Afghanistan and Pakistan and growing worries in Islamabad about expanding ties between New Delhi and Kabul, the idea of a triangular summit might seem outlandish.

Yet, the three leaders are confronted with the tension between the economic

imperatives of regional geography and the traditional Pakistani search for influence across its boundaries in India and Afghanistan.

A number of recent political developments have reinforced the notion that geography is destiny for India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The decision by the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation at the Dhaka summit last November to admit Kabul as a full member of the organisation has initiated the process of integrating Afghanistan into South Asia and its incipient free trade zone.

The new US perspective on restoring the traditional economic and strategic links between Afghanistan and Central Asia on the one hand and the sub-continent on the other is reflected in the US State Department’s decision to regroup the regions into a single bureau.

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