Secret diplomacy: India, Pakistan hold talks in Bangkok,  stick to known positions!

-Dr. Abdul Ruff

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It has been known to the world that the relationship between India and Pakistan is hampered owing to Kashmir issue. Both India and Pakistan invaded, occupied and shared neighboring Jammu Kashmir. Kashmiris, only Muslims, are being targeted by Indian military for their lives and silence their opposition to Indian control machination strategy.

Already over 100, 000 Kashmiri Muslims have lost their precious lives.

India wants Pakistan to end hostilities over Kashmir issue as the issue, according Indian military, has been solved. Pakistan continues to raise the Kashmir issue in intentional forums, making New Delhi grow impatient and show anger by killing the besieged Kashmiri Muslims in fake encounters in Kashmir valley.

India and Pakistan use Kashmir, sandwiched between them, as a buffer zone. For Pakistan the Kashmir issue is not solved and asks the UN to implement its resolution for a referendum to ascertain the preferences of Kashmiris about sovereignty, India or Pakistan. But neither UN nor India care for plebiscite.

As it stands, Kashmiris are not involved in “talks” being held from time to time between India and Pakistan. While Pakistan wants the Kashmiri representatives to be invited for talks, India objects, saying the Kashmiris cannot be a party to the “dispute”.

Meanwhile the cross-border trade continues, but bilateral talks being held at various levels have been stalled as they have become irrelevant as they dont decide anything worthwhile.

India and Pakistan continue to talk unofficially outside but no breakthroughs have been possible so far because India wants to discuss terrorism while Pakistan focuses on Kashmir. The powerful cricket mafias both in India and Pakistan, both official and unofficial, have been pushing for joint cricket exercises for sharing 50s, 100s and above runs among batboys.

In a dramatic development, the National Security Advisors of India and Pakistan – Ajit Doval and Lieutenant General Naseer Khan Janjua – away from media limelight held a secret meeting in Bangkok last week, discussing a range of issues including peace and security, terrorism and Jammu and Kashmir. This meeting was agreed on by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif when they met in Paris last week. Bangkok was chosen as it was a convenient location for both sides. Sources said talks with Pakistan could lay the groundwork for PM Modi's visit to Pakistan next year for the SAARC summit. A joint statement issued later said the Foreign Secretaries of both countries accompanied the NSAs. The statement said the discussions "covered peace and security, terrorism, Jammu and Kashmir, other issues including tranquility over the Line of Control". "It was agreed to carry forward the constructive engagement," the statement said.

The joint statement which came after the meeting of NSA's said the talks were held pursuant to a meeting between Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Nawaz Sharif on the sidelines of the climate meet in Paris, rejecting the version given by the Indian side then that it was a mere "exchange of courtesies" although Sharif had told Pakistani media that he had a "good meeting" and "doors of dialogue should open".

Reports suggest that PM Modi took initiative on the NSA meeting, which they say builds on the Ufa declaration on NSA-level dialogue and the discussions lasted for over four hours and that all subjects discussed have a security dimension, including Jammu and Kashmir. Sources say the NSAs will meet again.

Reports suggest that the Indian external affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will travel to Islamabad on December 08 for a two-day visit during which she will hold talks with her counterpart in Pakistan, Sartaj Aziz and attend a multilateral conference on Afghanistan.

Swaraj's visit comes two days after talks between the National Security Advisors of India and Pakistan on Sunday in Bangkok, where they discussed terrorism, Jammu and Kashmir and a range of key bilateral issues apart from agreeing to carry forward a "constructive"

engagement.

The External Affairs Minister will call on Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and meet his adviser on foreign affairs, Aziz on the sidelines of the 'Heart of Asia' regional conference in Afghanistan on Wednesday. Her visit comes three years after former External Affairs Minister S M Krishna travelled to Islamabad in 2012 when the countries had inked the visa liberalization pact. During her visit, Swaraj will be accompanied by Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar, who was also present during the four-hour-long meeting between National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and his Pakistani counterpart Naseer Janjua in the Thai capital.

Swaraj is set to visit Islamabad on Tuesday for the Afghanistan-related Heart of Asia ministerial conference. A meeting between the two ministers on the sidelines of the conference is highly possible now. Any forward movement in these talks will also prepare the ground for Modi's visit to Pakistan, the first one after Vajpayee's in January 2004. Pakistan is hosting the SAARC summit next year.

What it signals is a possible meeting between external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and her Pakistani counterpart Sartaj Aziz.

Before Paris, Modi and Sharif had held a bilateral meeting in Russian city of Ufa where they decided that their NSA's would meet to discuss all "terror-related" issues. However, Pakistan had called-off Aziz's visit after New Delhi had made it clear that he would not be allowed to meet Kashmiri separatist leaders in the Indian capital.

NSA-level talks were scheduled earlier this year when the two Prime Ministers had met for a bilateral summit in Russia's Ufa on the sidelines of a convention. But the meeting fell through at the last minute over a proposed meeting between Pakistan's then Security Advisor Sartaj Aziz and the Kashmiri separatists.

There were disagreements about the agenda of the meeting too - with Pakistan pushing for an "open agenda" and India maintaining the talks should be confined to terrorism. Welcoming the talks, former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir Omar Abdullah tweeted, "Paris was more than the officially termed "courtesy meeting". Good to see India & Pakistan resume the dialogue process."

When Indian PM Narendra Modi had an animated discussion with his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif on the sidelines of the UN Climate Change Summit in Paris last Monday, many wondered what they could have discussed. In the absence of any official release about the talks, the media could only speculate about the contents. On Sunday, the answer became clear to all and sundry. This time, there was an official statement. The discussions covered peace and security, terrorism, Jammu and Kashmir, and others, including tranquility over the Line of Control. The statement said the two sides also agreed to carry forward constructive engagement.

Interestingly, the NSA-level Bangkok meeting coincided with the Track-II, 17th Chaophraya Dialogue between Indian and Pakistani journalists in the same city. However, it seems none of them got any hint of the meeting, till the foreign offices of both countries put out a joint statement. The timing and the venue of the meeting were kept a secret, lest it gets derailed.

Last Monday's meeting between Modi and Sharif in Paris was the first between the two leaders since they met on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting in Ufa, Russia, in July this year. They had then agreed on a meeting between the NSAs of the two countries and had also directed the foreign secretaries to renew talks. However, talks between NSA Ajit Doval and his then Pakistani counterpart Sartaj Aziz, scheduled in New Delhi in August this year, were cancelled after the Pakistan high commission insisted on inviting Hurriyat leaders for a reception in honour of Aziz. India also wanted to skip the word Kashmir and other bilateral issues and concentrate only on terrorism during the talks, which was unacceptable to Pakistan.

Last month, on the sidelines of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Valletta, Malta, Sharif had told British Premier David Cameron that Islamabad was ready for unconditional talks with New Delhi. Though no country will acknowledge it, it seems the Paris meeting, which sparked hopes of a renewal of the dialogue process, was an outcome of nudging by big powers.

Senior journalists at the 17th Chaophraya Dialogue, who met under the aegis of Jinnah Institute (JI) and Australia-India Institute (AII), called upon both the governments to delink confidence-building measures from dialogue process, and called for encouraging cross-LoC interactions. They expressed the hope that the two countries would meet soon to increase bilateral trade and economic cooperation, and urged Pakistan to give Non-Discriminatory Market Access status to India.

Meanwhile, cricket mafias in both India and Pakistan have been pushing for resumption of talk so that cricket matches between the two countries could resume. The pressure from both sides are so strong that the sides have not been able to resist the “profitable” cricket ties, though matches between India and Pakistan- two nuclear powers –only adds to mutual hatred as cricket is viewed in both countries as life and death issue.

Cricket is a fake sport, arranged by cricket boards directly and via mafia to offer big scores to batboys. The pitch, toss, bowling, records and ranking are unreliable in cricket. Every pitch and field regulation is made to promote only the batboys. Since most of the cricket matches are fixed well in advance for the outcomes and records, cricket is not a credible sport. Being an Islamic nation Pakistan should discourage its youth from playing only for false runs and fake records.

Indo-Pakistan relationship should be built on concrete foundations of mutual trust and sincere intent. Cricket and fake records won’t help the purpose in any manner.

Had India and Pakistan not invaded Jammu Kashmir and then jointly colonized that nation, most probably their bilateral relations would have been strong. Both India and Pakistan, now the nuclear powers, can certainly improve the ties beyond meager cross border trade by making Kashmiris happy sovereign citizens as before 1947. Therefore, unless Kashmir issue is amicably settled in favor of Kashmiris, the Indo-Pakistani relations shall remain very low, if not tensed.