A day before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, during his Punjab visit, reiterated his desire for a peace, security and friendship treaty with Islamabad, Satinder K Lambah, his special envoy for the Indo-Pak dialogue, flew to Lahore to hold the latest in a back-channel talks with his counterpart Tariq Aziz on Pak President General Musharraf’s new “ideas” on Kashmir and push for a forward momentum on the Siachen issue.

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.

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