ISLAMABAD, June 23: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Pakistan has been the subject of intense speculation. There has been much talk in diplomatic circles here about recent reports in the Indian media that the visit expected this summer had been put off because Pakistan and India could not make headway on the Siachen issue.

That it was now being linked to an understanding on this front. Questions have been raised about linking the two. Such a notion is seen as flawed. It not only appears to negate the spirit of the Indo-Pakistan peace process but also seems to contradict India’s own position of adopting a step by step approach.

The rationale now being advanced by the Manmohan Singh government, and echoed recently by Indian foreign secretary Shyam Saran, is that there are high expectations from Singh’s visit to Pakistan and there will be immense disappointment on both sides if it fails to yield something tangible.

On the contrary it is believed a visit at this point would give an impetus to the sluggish peace process just as President Musharraf’s trip to India in April 2005 did. The truth is that the Indian premier’s not coming to Pakistan even 14 months after having accepted the invitation may well be the actual cause of disappointment.

After all there was no agreed agenda for President Musharraf’s visit to India last year and no landmark agreement was inked between the two countries. Yet not an iota of disappointment was expressed.

Conversely, the Singh-Musharraf meeting created new hope as commitment to the peace process was reiterated at the highest political level. A major achievement was the April 18 joint statement that declared the peace process ‘irreversible’ and laid down a roadmap that the two countries have been following. Also, it was instrumental in maintaining the momentum of the dialogue process that many feared would be derailed.

In recent days, even some of the Indian media and analysts have been critical of the delay in Singh’s visit to Pakistan ostensibly on the counsel of his key aides at the Prime Minister’s Office. In the Indian circles there is now acknowledgement of the flexibility shown by Pakistan in taking the peace process forward with emphatic calls for reciprocity by New Delhi. Delaying the visit further would be viewed as setback to the normalisation process of Indo-Pakistan relations that started in January 2004. It would convey lack of commitment to the peace process and would dampen hopes that come with the hype created by intermittent peace overtures.

On March 24, while flagging off the Amritsar-Nankana Sahib bus service, Manmohan Singh offered a treaty of ‘friendship, peace and security’ to Pakistan that grabbed headlines and instantly raised hopes. Last month in a speech during his visit to Srinagar, the Indian Prime Minister reiterated his commitment to resolve all outstanding issues with Pakistan including the Jammu and Kashmir.

On Tuesday at the launch of Poonch-Rawalakot bus service India’s ruling Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi declared the new road link would strengthen relations between Pakistan and India. However, these positive sentiments and good intentions have not translated into substantive movement towards consolidating the fragile peace process.

The International Crisis Group in its latest report ‘India, Pakistan and Kashmir: stabilising a cold peace’ has cautioned that the process of normalising Pakistan-India relations was reversible. It warned resumption of conflict was still possible unless the two nuclear-armed neighbours worked harder for advancing the peace process.

In diplomacy, each bilateral high-level political visit does not necessarily have to result in some ground-breaking agreement. Such visits hold a key symbolic value and generate goodwill that is otherwise wanting in Pakistan-India context.

More importantly, they help in confidence building and creating diplomatic space which are prerequisites for forward movement in dispute resolution. Given the chequered history of Pakistan-India relations that has been marked by high tensions and huge trust deficit such high-level contacts become even more imperative.

Notwithstanding what was seen as hardening of the Indian military establishment’s stance on the Siachen issue just ahead of the talks, it was lack of trust that prevented the two countries from reaching an understanding. This only underlines the need for greater interaction at the highest political level to address this crippling deficit that keeps pushing the two countries back to square one.

Two possible opportunities for high-level contact between Pakistan and India were lost last week as the Indian premier decided to stay away from the summit meetings of two key regional security groupings that were attended by President Musharraf. One was the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Summit in China and the other was Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Summit in Kazakhstan.

Last week in an interview to the Indian daily Asian Age Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri also expressed the hope that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would visit Pakistan “sooner than later.” In an obvious reference to the Indian attempt to link the visit to a concrete development, Mr Kasuri noted: “I do not agree that unless you score a goal there is no need to play a match.” His underlying message was that the visit would carry its own momentum as he argued that such high-level visits should not take place only when “everything is honky dory.”

While New Delhi seems to be testing the waters, a sense of disillusionment is now beginning to set in about the composite dialogue process in Pakistan. New Delhi must indicate dates for Dr Singh’s visit to Pakistan to prove the sceptics wrong and prevent the optimists from turning into cynics. It will go a long way in sustaining the normalisation process and, above all, removing the growing disconnect between good intentions and decisive moves towards settlement of outstanding bilateral disputes.