President Asif Ali Zardari and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh line up for a family photo at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Yekaterinburg on June 16, 2009. –Reuters Photo

Diplomatic jargon is anything but precise. Its vagueness covers up different strands and injured sensitivities. Yet the purpose is served.

There was an overall demand for India and Pakistan to resume their dialogue. But how to make it possible was the problem. New Delhi’s contention was that it could not begin the talks when the terrorists responsible for the Mumbai carnage had not been brought to justice and when the training camps in Pakistan had not been dismantled.

The visit by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Asif Ali Zardari to the Russian city of Yekaterinburg came in handy. The two were attending the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit. The organisation, with Brazil, Russia, Indonesia and China as members and India and Pakistan as observers, reflects big-power rivalry in Asia.

True, the Pakistan High Commission at Delhi had made an official request for Zardari’s appointment with Manmohan Singh at the time of the Shanghai summit. But New Delhi was reluctant to be seen to be holding talks when conditions for the dialogue had not been fulfilled. Yet it was important for the two to meet to break the ice because of increasing antagonism between the countries that share a border hundreds of miles long.

So, diplomacy came into play. A roundabout way was found. It was given out that the talks would take place on the sidelines of the summit. Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon at the media briefing was inscrutable. He said that the prime minister and the president would be in ‘the same room at the same time’ and nothing could be said beyond that. It was obvious that New Delhi was circumventing the fact of the meeting which had been finalised even before the departure of the prime minister from Delhi.

It is apparent that the ruling Congress did not want to go against public opinion which is anti-Pakistan after the attack on Mumbai. Parliament too had taken a hard line in its first session this month and had given a sort of mandate to Manmohan Singh. That was the reason why he told Zardari within the hearing of the media that he (Manmohan Singh) had a limited mandate which was to ask Pakistan to assure India that it would not allow terrorists attacking the latter to operate from its territory.

I think India should have initiated the talks earlier. It would have served as pressure on Islamabad. Had there been a dialogue going on between the two, Pakistan would have filed an appeal in the Supreme Court against the release by Lahore High Court of the Jamaatud Dawa leader Hafiz Saeed. Islamabad would not have risked the breakdown by not acting against him. In any case, the summit meeting has resulted in Punjab’s decision to appeal against the release.

America’s relentless pressure on both governments was also there. Washington was in constant touch with the representatives of the two governments to know about the progress of the talks, minute by minute. Unfortunately, the US may be a third party overlooking the shoulders of two foreign secretaries when they meet to discuss terrorism, the point agreed on by the prime minister and the president.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi is quite right in describing the meeting as ‘a positive step.’ At last the deadlock has been broken. Some commentators in India have reacted adversely. They have argued that New Delhi had once again frittered away the advantage without getting anything concrete. Their plea is that the international pressure on Pakistan was so heavy that it would have agreed to India’s conditions in due course.

My feeling is that the international pressure was beginning to bear on New Delhi to start the dialogue. Most of the critics in India are hawks. If it had been up to them, they would have driven India to war against Pakistan long ago. Some Indian TV channels portray most of the time that there is no alternative to hostility.

It is obvious that foreign secretaries would not be discussing only terrorists using Pakistani soil to attack India. The talk would take in the entire gamut of terrorism which is posing a threat to the very entity of Pakistan. Foreign Minister Qureshi has warned that the Taliban could spill over and enter India as well. This is ominous.

India may want to participate in the war against terrorism in the entire region and evolve a South Asian approach. Washington has reportedly requested New Delhi to send its forces to fight by the side of the Pakistan Army. But for that Islamabad would have to build up confidence in India. I wish there were some efforts, however small, towards that.

At present, Pakistan is concentrating on the terrorists fighting in Malakand, Waziristan and beyond, and not acting against the terrorists operating against India. Manmohan Singh has said that India would go more than half way if Pakistan covered some distance. The latter can give evidence of that by dismantling the training camps straightaway. It is difficult for the Indian people to be convinced about Pakistan’s bona fides if the training centres stay intact.

The question asked in Pakistan is whether the meeting between the two foreign secretaries, scheduled for July, would lead to a composite dialogue. In a way, the composite dialogue has begun because the level of talks between the two countries has been raised from the level of home secretaries to foreign secretaries. But the resumption of talks should not be taken by Pakistan as a strategic victory. The meeting between the two foreign secretaries is yet another opportunity to lessen the distance between the two countries.

Too much time and too much money have been wasted in talking against each other instead of talking to each other. The two countries have not experienced peace since independence; 62 years is a long period for the people to suffer estrangement and live in fear of war all the time.

Our perceptions are diametrically opposed to the facts. Zardari is said to have been embarrassed by the reportedly tough talk of Manmohan Singh. The Pakistani president would be still more embarrassed by the talk in which most people in India indulge. They are exasperated. They suspect Pakistan. Yet, however different politically we may be, emotionally and mentally we are the same. Let there be more and wider people-to-people contact. This would help.

The meeting between Manmohan Singh and Zardari should not be taken as a compromise with forces which are bent upon substituting liberal thinking with fanaticism. The meeting was a long-awaited step which might even give heart to opponents and hawks. But it was worth taking.

The writer is a leading journalist based in Delhi.