Aziz in Amritsar as key moot gets under way
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NEW DELHI: Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz arrived in Amritsar a day ahead of schedule on Saturday evening for the Heart of Asia conference, which begins in the Sikhdom’s most sacred city on Sunday morning.
Mr Aziz’s rejigged schedule has enabled him to dodge the fog that plays havoc with flights in winters, but political weather watchers were scouring for hints, if any, of how he would negotiate the chill in ties with India.
Reports speculated whether Mr Aziz’s early arrival presaged a ‘chance’ bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who hosts the multilateral conference on Afghanistan.
In the evening, Mr Aziz attended a dinner hosted for the visiting dignitaries at a heritage village ‘Sadda Pind’ on the outskirts of Amritsar, according to APP.
Handshake between Aziz and Modi; a bouquet of flowers sent to ailing Swaraj
Prime Minister Modi and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani also attended the dinner hosted by Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal.
Sartaj Aziz shook hands with Mr Modi.
“We advised Mr Aziz to come early given the fog factor in the morning,” a Pakistani diplomat told The Hindu, referring to visibility issues that have delayed dozens of flights to north Indian cities, including Amritsar. The forecast for Sunday morning was a visibility of 600M, far below the stipulated 1,000M clearance VIP flight controllers normally insist on, another official told The Hindu.
The latest militant strike on Nagrota base as well as the earlier Uri attack would be an obvious impediment to any thoughts of a surprise breakthrough.
“There is no meeting,” a senior official told The Hindu, when asked about the chance of a ‘pull-aside’ meeting between Mr Modi and Mr Aziz in Amritsar, indicating only a joint call-on was scheduled.
It is being speculated that India and Afghanistan will seek to pin Pakistan on terrorism, with a possible draft declaration at the conference, which will include hard reference to “cross-border terrorism”, and “sanctuaries for terror groups”.
The conference will be jointly inaugurated by President Ghani and Mr Modi, who will also hold a bilateral meeting, their fourth such meeting this year.
At a press conference ahead of the conference, India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) made it clear that no talks with Mr Aziz would be possible in the current circumstances, calling terrorism a “calculated strategy” of Pakistan.
“Pakistan is a country which has a long record of carrying out cross-border terrorism which it regards as an instrument of state policy. India has always been open to talks, but obviously it cannot be that talks take place in an atmosphere of continued terrorism. The sooner Pakistan stops cross-border terrorism, the sooner bilateral relations can come back on track,” MEA spokesperson Vikas Swarup said.
However, speaking to The Hindu, Pakistan’s High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit said that Pakistan was ready to wait. “If India is not ready, we can always wait. We will continue to work to break the impasse, but we are very clear that dialogue is the only way our countries can move forward and they cannot live in a state of perpetual hostility,” Mr Basit said.
Baqir Sajjad Syed adds from Islamabad: Journalists following the Pakistani and Indian delegations at the Heart of Asia meeting quickly linked Mr Aziz’s early arrival to change in the schedule of a meeting between Mr Modi and the Afghan president, which was moved at the last minute from Saturday to Sunday.
Soon after his arrival in Amritsar, Mr Aziz sent a bouquet to ailing Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and wished her speedy recovery.
Ties between Pakistan and India have been in deep freeze since the start of uprising in India-held Kashmir in July this year, but they hit rock bottom following the militant attack on Uri military camp after which Delhi claimed to have conducted a ‘surgical strike’ across the Line of Control (LoC) and intensified shelling of targets on Pakistani side in some of the worst violations of 2003 ceasefire accord.
The senior officials’ meeting of the Heart of Asia process was held on Saturday and their deliberations would feed into the ministerial session on Sunday.
Fourteen regional countries — Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan and the UAE — are part of this initiative that was launched in 2011 for encouraging economic and security cooperation between Afghanistan and its neighbours for dealing with the common problems of terrorism, extremism and poverty.
The process is supported by 17 other countries, predominantly Western states, and 12 international organisations.
Afghanistan, which is confronted with resurgent Taliban militancy at home, is pushing for a regional counterterrorism mechanism at the Amritsar meeting.
The conference will also deliberate on regional connectivity projects, including TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) gas pipeline project and a five-nation railway project linking Iranian port Chabahar to Afghanistan and beyond.
Published in Dawn, December 4th, 2016
