External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s visit to Pakistan over the weekend and a crucial round of boundary talks with China this week showcase the highest priority for Indian diplomacy this year — transforming relations with Pakistan and China. It involves finding imaginative solutions to two of the most intractable challenges that India had faced since its Independence: the Jammu and Kashmir question with Pakistan and the boundary dispute with China. There could be no better way of celebrating India’s sixtieth anniversary of Independence than cracking either or both of these problems this year.

As it turns out, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is due to visit both Pakistan and China this year. In Islamabad, Mukherjee did not announce the dates for Dr Singh’s visit. But there is no doubt that discussing the timing and substance of such a visit was at the top of Mukherjee’s talks with Pakistan’s President Musharraf on Saturday. From all available indications, it is not whether but when the PM travels to Pakistan. Meanwhile over the weekend in Cebu, Philippines on the margins of the Second East Asia Summit, Dr Singh received and accepted an invitation from Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to visit Beijing later this year.

Both the visits of the PM could turn out to be consequential for India’s bilateral relations with Pakistan and China and our national security strategy as a whole. Dr Singh’s visit to Pakistan would only be the fifth by an Indian prime minister to Pakistan on either bilateral or multilateral business in the last sixty years. Dr Singh’s trip to China would also be the fifth such visit by an Indian prime minister. These rare visits to these neighbouring capitals should become the political driver in finding solutions to long-standing problems with Pakistan and China.

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