PM on front foot,put one past MEA

Sources said that on Friday morning — the day after India’s win over Australia — PMO officials discussed the possibility of the Prime Minister being in Mohali for the match. That afternoon,however,the PM sounded out his officials about converting this into a bilateral effort and inviting the Pakistani leadership.

There was a consensus that here was an opportunity to hold a conversation without any official agenda or pressure for outcomes — which usually tend to burden such meetings — and,therefore,should be used. Even if the Pak side were to say no,it was felt,there would be no adverse fallout.

Personally,the PM,sources said,was “quite convinced”. Insiders said he had been wondering aloud about revisiting the Pakistan initiative given the fact that more than a year had passed since he had met either Zardari or Gilani. While an official invitation from Pakistan is pending with the PM,Islamabad has always attached substantive outcomes to any such visit and terror incidents have stalled progress.

Also,with the dialogue process resuming this week after a two-and-a-half-year hiatus following the Mumbai attacks,the argument was that such a meeting would be timely.

Once the decision was made,things moved fast. Cutting through red tape,the PMO directly contacted the offices of Zardari and Gilani. The message from Islamabad was that letters should reach soon. More so,since Gilani would have to be informed of the invite in Tashkent where he was away on an official visit.

So letters were faxed to their respective offices in Islamabad without involving the Indian High Commission. Soon the letters were released in the media to avoid any speculation. In fact,the PM was at a media function where this was announced in his presence.

The fact is that the letter was delivered through diplomatic channels only the next day. Significantly,the Ministry of External Affairs was not involved at the functional level. Sources confirmed that this was an effort initiated directly by the Prime Minister and took many of his senior colleagues by surprise.

Of late,a constant refrain from Islamabad to its Western interlocutors was that New Delhi had not been forthcoming on the dialogue front. India has kept underlining that Pak wasn’t moving ahead on the 26/11 probe. On talks,India advocated a calibrated approach rather than resuming the “composite dialogue” which essentially meant that conversation begins on issues where there is least divergence. That,too,was not acceptable to Pakistan.

Finally,India agreed to resume the dialogue and discuss all issues on the table. Even though the set of conversations announced after the meeting of the Foreign Secretaries in Thimphu last month mirror those in the “composite dialogue,” the two sides have agreed to avoid using the term.