By Jawed Naqvi
Daily DAWN
NEW DELHI, July 20: Pakistan’s Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir met Indian opposition leader Lal Kishan Advani on Sunday ahead of a two-day dialogue on confidence-building measures (CBMs) with his Indian counterpart Shivshankar Menon.
Mr Advani briefed Mr Bashir about a consensus among Indian parties “for the objective of achieving peace” with Pakistan and said domestic political situations in either country should not be allowed to interfere with the process.
According to a statement by the Pakistan High Commission, Mr Advani also assured the foreign secretary of his party’s full support to the current peace process in “letter and spirit”.
The Pakistani statement did not mention two separate meetings Mr Bashir had with representatives of Kashmiri resistance during which Islamabad’s approach to their struggle came in for critical comment.Hurriyat chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq was invited first to meet Mr Bashir with two other Kashmiri leaders at the high commission.
The Mirwaiz said he told Mr Bashir that CBM talks were welcome as long as they did not slow down the political resolution of the Kashmir issue.
He reminded the Pakistani official that the recent discovery of mass graves at a former campsite used by the Indian army pointed to sinister happenings in the Valley.
Unidentified people were buried there in hundreds.He said there were 200 other campsites across Jammu and Kashmir that needed to be inspected. An estimated 10,000 people have been declared missing in the state. The European Union is taking interest in the matter, the Mirwaiz said.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had promised zero tolerance for human rights abuse in Kashmir. “There has been no follow-up on any of the promises.”
On the other hand, the Mirwaiz said, Pakistan had shown weakness by not pressing its own point of view on the matter while of late it had readilyaccepted everything India wanted to discuss in the talks.Mr Bashir however said Pakistan was following up all the issues under the composite dialogue.
He said greater trade across the LoC would benefit the people of the state.JKLF leader Yasin Malik told Dawn that in his meeting with Mr Bashir he had emphasised the need to accelerate the political resolution of the Kashmir issue, lest people begin to lose faith in the CBMs.
“I told him that we welcome the CBMs. But there should also be progress on the resolution of the political issue.”As the foreign secretaries prepared to resume their composite dialogue here on Monday, analysts said recent attacks on Indian targets in Kashmir and Afghanistan by suspected militants coupled with political turbulence in both countries were expected to shadow the talks.
At least 10 security personnel were killed and many injured in a landmine blast on Srinagar-Baramulla road on Saturday, a day ahead of Mr Bashir’s arrival here.
Earlier, India’s National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan had blamed the ISI for a devastating suicide attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul.It is inevitable that Mr Bashir and Mr Menon would discuss these incidents together with their structured dialogue on Kashmir, cross-border terrorism and CBMs.
The two-day talks on July 21 and 22 will coincide with a crucial trust vote in the Indian parliament in which the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh looks vulnerable before a combined force of the opposition in a row over a nuclear deal with the United States.
If he survives, a meeting between the prime ministers of the two countries due next month in Colombo would assume centre-stage.
On Friday in Islamabad a working group on LoC raised some of the issues expected to be taken up during the composite dialogue.
On the other hand, Press Trust of India said on Saturday that India could emerge as Pakistan’s second largest trading partner after China owing to measures announced by Islamabad to boost bilateral trade, including the import of diesel and fuel oil from India.
