ISLAMABAD: Israel is now officially and openly on Pakistan’s radar.

The first formal overt diplomatic contact between the two countries was made in Istanbul last week. It is a handshake, not an embrace, an engagement not endorsement, is how this interaction is being referred to by Pakistan’s foreign policy establishment. Some Pakistani diplomats even prefer to characterize the current status of rapprochement with Israel as ‘contact’ rather than engagement which, they say, would mean sustained contacts. Irrespective of how this dramatic diplomatic posturing is packaged it has set stage for future engagement.

While Saudi King Abdullah and President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas were informed about the meeting a couple of days ahead of it, other ‘brotherly’ countries including Iran, Jordan, Egypt and Syria were also given the official word just 24 hours ahead of the contact. Pakistan also informed the United States and Britain about the meeting 24 hours in advance. Apparently the Chinese were also in the loop.

Turkey, that has for many years been advocating this move by Pakistan, knew about it all along. Insiders are convinced that the Indians had no clue about it and were shell-shocked when the news broke. This sentiment was summed up rather well by Raja Mohan in his piece titled: ‘Pak shakes hand with Israel, India twiddles thumbs’ that appeared in The Indian Express on September 2.

On Monday when this scribe asked Indian High Commissioner Shivshankar Menon if India had prior knowledge, he claimed that “the whole world knew”.

Given the sensitive nature of this move Islamabad is playing it down but Tel Aviv is projecting it as a major success of its diplomacy, as is conveyed by the Israeli press.

The contact between Islamabad and Tel Aviv in Istanbul was not a one-on-one affair between the two foreign ministers but a delegation-level interaction: one plus two. They met twice on two consecutive days, first informally and then formally. At both the meetings Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri was accompanied by his director-general Khalid Mahmud, a seasoned diplomat, and Pakistan’s ambassador in Turkey Lt-Gen (retd) Syed Iftikhar Husain Shah, former NWFP governor. The Israeli foreign minister Silvan Shalom was accompanied by his foreign secretary and head of the foreign minister’s office.

The two sides first met over dinner on Aug 31 at Istanbul’s posh Dort Mowsem (Four Seasons) Hotel. Turkey’s senior minister Professor Mehmet Aydin was also present on the occasion. During the two-hour working dinner, discussions focused largely on the need to resolve the festering Palestine and Kashmir issues. The next morning (Sept 1) a formal meeting took place at the same hotel exclusively between the Pakistani and Israeli delegations. No representative of the Turkish government was present.

This time around the two sides zeroed in on the scope of bilateral relations and the possible next steps. Mr Kasuri clearly spelt out the level and terms of engagement. That recognition of Israel will come only after the complete withdrawal of its occupation forces from the Palestinian territory and establishment of an independent Palestinian state. India also figured. Reportedly foreign minister Shalom assured the Pakistani side that Israel’s relations with India were not at the expense of relations with other countries like Pakistan.

The possibility of some confidence-building measures, including a meeting between President Musharraf and the Israeli prime minister at a later stage were also discussed during the 90-minute dinner encounter. The Israeli side was keen that the travel ban to Israel on Pakistani passport be done away with. The current Pakistani passport bears the note: ‘This passport is valid for all countries of the world except Israel.’ There is a view in diplomatic circles that the travel ban could be lifted without Pakistan’s formal recognition of Israel.

Pakistanis privy to the meetings believe they were “useful and constructive”. Top Israeli diplomats came across as “smart, knowledgeable and upfront”. This landmark interaction, it is believed, may be the beginning of “unprecedented engagement” between the once estranged countries. The two states may not have had direct clashes but the Palestinian issue which includes the end of Israeli occupation of the second holiest Muslim place ‘Al Quds’ does preclude any direct bilateral relations. Pakistan hopes the Istanbul engagement will help in resolving the issue.

The contact is most likely to lead to busy back-channel diplomacy on this front in the days to come. The government has felt relieved that the backlash at large has not been sharp as it had expected. Inside Pakistan it has been relatively mild and measured.

Foreign Minister Kasuri’s assertion is that this move would create diplomatic space for Pakistan by allowing it to play a role in the Middle East peace process and is also likely to help advance Pakistan’s own interests. The belief in Islamabad is that Israel’s enormous influence on US foreign policy, the Jewish clout in the major US concerns, media, academia and leading think tanks that help shape the policies, may over time become less anti-Pakistan. This belief is shared by many western and Muslim diplomats.

The key question however now is what roadmap Islamabad has in mind for the coming months and years in terms of a concrete quid pro quo that Pakistan will get out of it. It is being widely asked what step two and three will be. Will it also mean Israeli support in US Congress for enhanced status for Pakistan as a nuclear power, the kind of status India is now getting? While publicizing a quid pro quo at this time would be unwise, the hope is that architects of the Istanbul engagement have a roadmap in place.

Notably, Pakistan’s first formal contact with Israel in Istanbul coincided with Indo-Pakistan foreign secretaries talks in Islamabad. Many wonder if it was by design to send a strong signal to the Indians.

The word around is that the Indian foreign secretary’s call on the president was not all that ‘cordial’ as the photographs in the papers conveyed. It is learnt that the 30-minute meeting at one point turned sour. This happened when the president did some tough talking, underscoring the need for progress on substantive issues, including Jammu and Kashmir and warned against creating hype about the peace process with sheer CBMs.

Saran in turn raised the issue of cross-LoC infiltration from the Pakistan side. President Musharraf then reportedly gave him a dressing down, telling him loud and clear that there was no infiltration taking place from this side and it was all propaganda. That status quo was not acceptable. Saran was also reminded of the spirit of the April 18 Pakistan-India Joint Statement.

Saran, perhaps shaken by the president’s straight talk, quickly wrapped up his scheduled press conference soon after, taking only three questions. Reportedly, when asked by an Indian journalist if he had raised the issue of cross-border terrorism with President Musharraf, Saran did not give a direct answer. His response was that India welcomed the recent assurances articulated by President Musharraf on combating terrorism and extremism and hoped these commitments were implemented. His parting note was: “As far as we are concerned violence and infiltration still continues on ground.”

MANMOHAN-MUSHARRAF SUMMIT: Initially President Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister were scheduled to just meet on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session but now it appears they will also dine. Apparently President Musharraf has now been formally invited to dinner by Dr Manmohan Singh on Sept 14.

DHAKA: The recent decision of the government of Khaleda Zia to have a two-day weekend, Friday and Saturday, has not only upset the country’s business and industrial establishments, it has also disheartened a few centrist leaders of the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), still trying to stand in the ways of the organisation’s quick degradation to a right-wing political platform.

The business leaders are unhappy, primarily because the decision will hit hard their business, particularly the export-import business, with the rest of the world with which they will now practically be cut off for three days a week. Again, they are shocked by the government’s decision, because the announcement came when the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI), the top body of the country’s businessmen and industrialists, has been demanding that the idea of two-day public holidays be abandoned in the first place, and that the one-day weekly public holiday be restored to Sunday.

The centrist leaders of the BNP are disappointed because some of them tried to restore the public holiday to Sunday, primarily to prove that the party, which came into being with the promise of pursuing a centrist political line, keeping itself away from both the left- and right-wing polity, has not yet been dominated completely by the right-wingers. They failed, thanks to the pressure mounted by the Jamaat-i-Islami, considered to be an important partner of the government of the BNP-led four-party alliance on the one hand, and the increasing influence of the right-wing leaders of the BNP on its chairperson, Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, on the other.

Bangladesh used to have weekly public holiday on Sunday until the mid-1980s, when Lt General H. M. Ershad was in power. An unpopular military dictator of the time, Ershad declared Islam as the religion of the state and announced Friday as a weekly public holiday, visibly to gain popularity. Given his life style, Ershad could be accused of anything but allegiance to Islam, or any religion for that matter. It was a pure political opportunism that he resorted to secure support of an Islamist constituency based in hundreds of Madrasas.

With the fall of Ershad regime in late 1990, in the face of a mass movement, came to the power the BNP headed by Begum Khaleda Zia. There was a move at that time to restore the weekend to Sunday, but her government eventually abandoned the idea fearing that the opposition Awami League might resort to reap political benefit out of the issue and propagating that the BNP was not that Islamist that it poses to be.

Then came Awami League, headed by Sheikh Hasina, in power in late 1996. In 1997, Hasina’s government extended weekly public holidays to two days – Friday and Saturday This was done primarily to appease the public servants, the leaders of whom had publicly opposed the government of Khaleda Zia in early 1996. Business communities unsuccessfully protested the step. The weekly holidays were reduced to one day — Friday— in October 2001, when Khaleda Zia’s BNP-led four-party alliance came to power.

Meanwhile, the FBCCI had been lobbying with a section of government leaders to restore the weekly public holiday to Sunday. But another group of government leaders recently floated the idea of increasing the weekend to two days again, and the FBCCI geared up its lobbing. But the formers won, while the recent increase in the oil price helped them succeeded in their move. This group argued that the government would save around Tk 1600 million a year as fuel consumption in the transport sector and power consumption will diminish, if two-day weekly holiday is introduced. They showed that because of the two-day holiday, consumption of octane will be reduced by around 5,074 tons, petrol by 5,128 tons and diesel by 15,706 tons per year.

Bangladesh imports around 2.3 million tons of diesel, around 200,000 tons of octane and around 200,000 tons of crude oil only for producing petrol. Besides, this group said that during the weekends, power consumption shrinks by around 200 megawatts from the usual rate of 3,100-3,300 MW. They projected that around Tk 400 million can be saved because of the additional 52 weekly holidays.

But the FBCCI refuses to accept such arguments. “When we need to work seven days a week, if not overtime, we cannot afford a five-day working week and thereby keep the wheels of the economy idle on two precious days,” says FBCCI president Mir Nasir Hossain, referring to the fierce competition in the global market and the country’s need, particularly for its export dependent economy. “The two-day holiday will further hurt exports by literally shutting off the world for three days in a row. We want weekly holiday on Sunday only.”

The business leaders are planning to stage a demonstration to highlight the issue. But the centrist leaders of the BNP, who personally believe that changing Friday as weekly holiday would help restore the party’s image as a centrist party again, seems to have given up their battle against their rightwing counterparts at the moment. They have even refused to discuss the issue publicly. “You see, we have tried to restore the weekly holiday to Sunday, but failed,” says a senior minister on strict condition of anonymity.