Onward with talks

That the Foreign Secretaries of Pakistan and India have pledged to carry the normalization process forward despite the hurdles in the way is reassuring. There were accords on such issues as fishermen and commanders' meetings at local levels, but no progress was made on the proposed Muzaffarabad-Srinagar bus service, or on the Baglihar dam.

Nevertheless, the two sides have decided to keep themselves engaged in a positive spirit. As the joint statement issued at the end of the talks in Islamabad said, their common aim is to stick to the goal laid down by President Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New York in September.

The two heads of government had, in a joint statement, pledged to explore all possible options for a negotiated settlement of the Kashmir issue. The foreign secretaries' commitment to this objective thus holds out hope that Islamabad and New Delhi will continue to search for a solution to what indeed is the critical issue in their relationship.

As Pakistan's Foreign Secretary Riaz Khokhar put it, the "most significant" achievement of the talks process was the desire of the two sides to maintain "close contacts at high political levels".

Since the normalization process began last year, Pakistan and India have achieved a lot. The number of confidence-buildingmeasures taken by the two sides include the return of the diplomatic missions to full strength, the resumption of travel links, and exchanges of visits by parliamentarians, businessmen, literary personalities, journalists and showbiz celebrities, besides the revival of cricket ties.

These measures have served to lower tension and injected hope and optimism among the people of South Asia that their governments are capable of leading them toward peace and cooperation.

The Islamabad talks covered a wide variety of topics, but there was no progress on a number of major issues. These included lack of agreement on a joint draft with regard to the prior notification of missile tests, because of differences which Mr Khokhar called "narrow".

Other issues discussed included Siachen, the Wullar/Tulbul navigation project and Sir Creek. The foreign secretaries agreed that all these matters - besides drug trafficking, terrorism and cultural cooperation - will be taken up again when they meet next summer.

On the Baglihar dam, however, Pakistan made its position clear: if there were no agreement on the issue, Islamabad would take it to the World Bank. One hopes things would not go that far and New Delhi would carry out its obligations under the Indus Waters Treaty.

On Kashmir, Indian Foreign Secretary Shayam Saran reassured Islamabad that New Delhi had no intention of marginalizing the issue. His reaction came in response to Mr Khokhar's apprehensions that the Indian claim that entire Jammu and Kashmir was part of India was unhelpful in carrying the talks forward.

He also said that the "true representatives" of the people of Kashmir should be associated with the talks. Despite these differences, there was what Mr Saran called "a full and substantive discussion" on Kashmir. The spirit in which the talks were held augurs well for the future.

The two sides showed a determination to build on areas of convergence and carry the process forward. Let us hope that Pakistan and India will continue to talk in this spirit and be able finally to find a solution to the Kashmir problem which has been the single biggest cause of conflict in South Asia.

Why party less polls?

The decision by the federal and provincial governments to hold next year's local body elections on a non-party basis will be seen by many as weakening rather than strengthening the political process now in place.

While there may be administrative and financial reasons that call for reducing the strength of the union councils from existing 21 members to 13, the government's insistence that these should continue to work in isolation from the mainstream party-based political dispensation is not understandable.

There can only be one objective for doing so, and that is the government's desire to manipulate individuals into acquiescence rather than having to deal with organized party cadres at the grassroots' level who would follow their respective parties' line.

This is no service to democracy, nor to sustainable institution-building at the local government level. Under a democratic dispensation, local bodies are meant to serve as nurseries that over a period of time train and induct new leadership into the national political mainstream.

Thus, deliberately keeping the local bodies detached from provincial and national politics, and forcing those contesting the LB polls to renounce their party affiliations are an aberration that the country must do without.

As it is, the existing local bodies system - politicized nevertheless despite the efforts of the regime - has many problems, the lack of interest in facilitating their smooth functioning on the part of some provincial governments being the foremost.

This is because of the way the federal government implemented the devolution plan four years ago, devolving powers directly to the districts rather than doing so through the provinces.

It can be argued that the provinces did not have elected governments in place back then. But now that they do, they need to be brought on board and given a sense of stake in the working of the LB system.

Today, local governments are accountable neither to their voters nor to the provincial governments because the former's problems cannot be resolved without the latter releasing funds in time for the purpose.

Holding party-based elections at the local level will help integrate the system with the provincial and national set-ups because that will lend the LBs a voice through their parties represented at the higher levels.

Attack in Chitral

This week's attack on the offices of the Aga Khan Health Services in Chitral in which property was burned and two staffers were shot dead appears to be yet another hate-motivated attempt aimed at intimidating a minority community. It is not known who carried out the attack.

The police have picked up four suspects, two of them being detained for investigation of possible involvement in a land dispute to which one of the victims was apparently linked.

The other two being questioned belong to a banned militant organization. Evidently, with the situation still unclear, no fingers can be pointed at any specific individual or group, and it will probably be some time before the identity of the murderers is confirmed.

Nevertheless, judging by past incidents where other organizations under the Aga Khan's stewardship have been similarly targeted and warnings issued to them by some religious groups to curtail their activities, it is entirely possible that the recent attack was of a sectarian nature.

If this is confirmed then it would be a sad commentary on the direction that mainstream religious forces in the country have taken. Instead of appreciating the good work being done in the field of health and education by minority organizations, they have chosen, instead, to condemn them and cast aspersions on their motives.

Criticism, no doubt, is important in any social sector undertaking, but not of the kind indulged in by the religious lobby, which prefers to make an open and arrogant display of its self-righteousness rather than be guided in a more restrained manner by the finer tenets of faith.

In the long run, harassing minority communities in this manner can only lead to an unstable political situation and mark us as an intolerant people incapable of sustaining religious and sectarian diversity.