After Mumbai, only a naif would believe that the India-Pakistan peace process will remain unaffected. A deliberate pause in bilateral talks at this moment might provide Prime Minister Manmohan Singh valuable time and space to reflect on the basic assumptions about his principal interlocutor, President Pervez Musharraf.

When he first met the general a little less than two years ago in New York, Manmohan Singh had asserted that Musharraf was a man India “could do business with”. In early 2005, over-ruling opposition within his own establishment, Dr Singh invited Musharraf to visit India. And in a joint statement with him on April 18, Manmohan Singh declared that “the peace process was now irreversible”.

The prime minister held back from saying anything against Pakistan in his address to the nation a day after the Mumbai massacre. The Foreign Office too has moderated its language against Pakistan despite what it called the “appalling” remarks of Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri linking terrorist violence in Mumbai to the unresolved dispute over Jammu and Kashmir.

It is also necessary to recall that Manmohan Singh inherited the framework of the peace process from his predecessor, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who negotiated the January 6, 2004 statement with Musharraf in Islamabad. That statement was the result of a prolonged roller coaster ride between India and Pakistan during 1998-2004, which saw the nuclear tests, the Kargil war and the military confrontation after the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament on December 13, 2001, and reflected a delicate compromise.

... contd.