Raj Chengappa
Source Link
Mar 1 2015
The Foreign Secretary is expected to use the opportunity to discuss bilateral issues and to work out a roadmap for resumption of the stalled dialogue process between India and Pakistan.Even as the nation dissects threadbare the Union Budget presented in Parliament yesterday by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, two significant and not entirely unrelated developments will happen today. In Jammu, at a function attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the first-ever PDP-BJP coalition government to run the frontier state will be sworn in by Governor NN Vohra, ending months of haggling and political uncertainty. PDP leader and Chief Minister-designate Mufti Mohammed Sayeed sees his government as being a bridge first between the two regions of the state – Jammu and Kashmir — and then between the state and the Indian government and, as importantly (in his view), a bridge between India and Pakistan.
Even as Sayeed ascends the CM’s gaddi for the second time in his long political career, Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar would be winging his way to Bhutan to commence what Modi described in a Twitter message recently as a “SAARC yatra”, but everyone else calls an excuse to do a “Pak yatra”. It was the Modi government that called off Foreign Secretary-level talks last August expressing annoyance with Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit publicly consulting with the Hurriyat just before the then Indian Foreign Secretary was to go to Islamabad. Since then, in keeping with his neighbourhood emphasis and under international pressure to resume the dialogue, Modi has made several conciliatory moves, including using the ongoing 2015 World Cup Cricket to wish subcontinent teams luck and initiate a SAARC diplomatic effort.
So, after Bhutan, Jaishankar goes to Bangladesh on March 2, Pakistan on March 3 and Afghanistan on March 4. With External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj visiting Sri Lanka from March 6, Jaishankar would accompany her and push not only the SAARC stuff but, more importantly, prepare the ground for the visit by Modi in mid-March – the first such bilateral visit by an Indian Prime Minister since 1987. The visit would signal a remarkable turnaround in relations between the two countries, after the recent elections that saw President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who had a decided tilt towards China, being swept out of power.
Modi is expected to visit Jaffna as a show of solidarity to the Lanka Tamils. It is a move that may make the ruling BJP look good in Tamil Nadu where the party is trying to carve out political space for itself. But it is not without risks as it could offend the Sinhala majority in Lanka at a time when the new President, Maithripala Sirisena, is trying to “unite and heal” the country by passing crucial Constitutional amendments to change the form of government to a parliamentary system and also devolve greater power to the provinces.
Currently though, it is Jaishankar’s visit to Islamabad that is causing more controversy as it comes at a time when there is no rationale for the Modi government to be conciliatory towards Pakistan. Ceasefire violations by Pakistan continue on the border and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s hold over the country appears to be weakening by the day. The timing of the talks is in some ways linked to the fact that a credible Assembly election was held in Jammu and Kashmir and a coalition government is finally being sworn in. That will give Jaishankar more power to his elbow when he talks with his Pakistani interlocutors. As the focus of Jaishankar’s visit is ostensibly SAARC-related, he will try to persuade Pakistan to sign the intra-SAARC Motor Vehicles Agreement which it blocked at the recent Kathmandu summit. Pakistan has also not shown much interest in Modi’s brainwave of India building a communication satellite for SAARC countries to facilitate connectivity for development purposes, including telemedicine. Nor has Islamabad been enthusiastic about the SAARC University set up in Delhi.So, while Jaishankar will raise these SAARC-related items when he is Pakistan, he is expected to use the opportunity to discuss bilateral issues and to work out a roadmap for resumption of the stalled dialogue process between the two countries. Top on Jaishankar’s priority list would be to tell Pakistan that without halting the spate of ceasefire violations on the border, there could be no meaningful progress in relations. Another issue that Jaishankar may ask Pakistan, as proof of sincerity, is to move forward on the sequence agreed upon to boost bilateral trade. The first among them was for Islamabad to expand the current list of 120 items that it now permits India to export via the Wagah border to include the 2,000-odd Indian goods that Pakistan permits via the Karachi port. On its part, Islamabad would push for elevating the dialogue on Kashmir and terror to a Special Representative level to give it a higher public profile. Pakistan is also pushing to expand discussions on water beyond the Tulbul navigation-Wullar Barrage dispute to other river water sharing issues. For India’s new Foreign Secretary, the Islamabad leg of his SAARC yatra, would truly be baptism by fire.
Source Link
Mar 1 2015
Even as Sayeed ascends the CM’s gaddi for the second time in his long political career, Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar would be winging his way to Bhutan to commence what Modi described in a Twitter message recently as a “SAARC yatra”, but everyone else calls an excuse to do a “Pak yatra”. It was the Modi government that called off Foreign Secretary-level talks last August expressing annoyance with Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit publicly consulting with the Hurriyat just before the then Indian Foreign Secretary was to go to Islamabad. Since then, in keeping with his neighbourhood emphasis and under international pressure to resume the dialogue, Modi has made several conciliatory moves, including using the ongoing 2015 World Cup Cricket to wish subcontinent teams luck and initiate a SAARC diplomatic effort.
So, after Bhutan, Jaishankar goes to Bangladesh on March 2, Pakistan on March 3 and Afghanistan on March 4. With External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj visiting Sri Lanka from March 6, Jaishankar would accompany her and push not only the SAARC stuff but, more importantly, prepare the ground for the visit by Modi in mid-March – the first such bilateral visit by an Indian Prime Minister since 1987. The visit would signal a remarkable turnaround in relations between the two countries, after the recent elections that saw President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who had a decided tilt towards China, being swept out of power.
Modi is expected to visit Jaffna as a show of solidarity to the Lanka Tamils. It is a move that may make the ruling BJP look good in Tamil Nadu where the party is trying to carve out political space for itself. But it is not without risks as it could offend the Sinhala majority in Lanka at a time when the new President, Maithripala Sirisena, is trying to “unite and heal” the country by passing crucial Constitutional amendments to change the form of government to a parliamentary system and also devolve greater power to the provinces.
Currently though, it is Jaishankar’s visit to Islamabad that is causing more controversy as it comes at a time when there is no rationale for the Modi government to be conciliatory towards Pakistan. Ceasefire violations by Pakistan continue on the border and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s hold over the country appears to be weakening by the day. The timing of the talks is in some ways linked to the fact that a credible Assembly election was held in Jammu and Kashmir and a coalition government is finally being sworn in. That will give Jaishankar more power to his elbow when he talks with his Pakistani interlocutors. As the focus of Jaishankar’s visit is ostensibly SAARC-related, he will try to persuade Pakistan to sign the intra-SAARC Motor Vehicles Agreement which it blocked at the recent Kathmandu summit. Pakistan has also not shown much interest in Modi’s brainwave of India building a communication satellite for SAARC countries to facilitate connectivity for development purposes, including telemedicine. Nor has Islamabad been enthusiastic about the SAARC University set up in Delhi.So, while Jaishankar will raise these SAARC-related items when he is Pakistan, he is expected to use the opportunity to discuss bilateral issues and to work out a roadmap for resumption of the stalled dialogue process between the two countries. Top on Jaishankar’s priority list would be to tell Pakistan that without halting the spate of ceasefire violations on the border, there could be no meaningful progress in relations. Another issue that Jaishankar may ask Pakistan, as proof of sincerity, is to move forward on the sequence agreed upon to boost bilateral trade. The first among them was for Islamabad to expand the current list of 120 items that it now permits India to export via the Wagah border to include the 2,000-odd Indian goods that Pakistan permits via the Karachi port. On its part, Islamabad would push for elevating the dialogue on Kashmir and terror to a Special Representative level to give it a higher public profile. Pakistan is also pushing to expand discussions on water beyond the Tulbul navigation-Wullar Barrage dispute to other river water sharing issues. For India’s new Foreign Secretary, the Islamabad leg of his SAARC yatra, would truly be baptism by fire.
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