While the UPA government is tight-lipped on Lambah’s visit, official sources confirmed that PM’s special envoy left for Lahore on December 19 to meet with Pak National Security Advisor Tariq Aziz to find a way forward in the Indo-Pak arrangement.

During his three-day trip to Pakistan, Aziz apparently fleshed out Musharraf’s ideas of self-governance in Kashmir with Lambah and sought New Delhi’s response to these “out-of-the-box solutions.”

Singh has already welcomed Musharraf’s ideas and the government has also taken positive note of Islamabad’s efforts to change school history text-books that until recently espoused the two-nation theory on the basis of religion and not economic disparity. New Delhi believes that Musharraf’s ideas are not a regurgitation of his old proposals on Kashmir but novel ideas that can be considered after they have been studied in detail.

Lambah’s trip to Lahore comes at a time when External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee is all set for a day-trip to Islamabad on January 13, 2007 to invite Musharraf for the SAARC summit in New Delhi.

Mukherjee as of now is slated to return the same day. Coincidentally, separatist Hurriyat Conference leader Mirwaiz Umer Farooq is also expected to interact with the Pakistani leadership around January 5-7 next year. The Mirwaiz is currently on a European tour.

Although official sources maintained that no immediate breakthrough is expected in the Indo-Pak dialogue, the fact is that both sides are pushing for withdrawal of troops from the Saltoro ridge overlooking the Siachen Glacier.

However, New Delhi wants Islamabad to recognize, even through technical means, the Indian Army’s positions on the ridge and the glacier in the overall agreement. The back-channel parleys are focused on that and this has even been acknowledged by Pakistan Foreign Minister Kurshid Kasuri during his recent trip to Delhi.

All the same, official sources still believe in “baby steps” in the accident-prone Indo-Pak engagement road as Islamabad is still not amenable to opening the Jammu-Sialkote and Kargil-Skardu route, just as New Delhi rules out any significant withdrawal of security forces from Kashmir before there is a tangible, significant change in violence levels in the Valley.