WASHINGTON: The US State Department has said that no single effort — even by a superpower — could generate a new trend in India-Pakistan relations.

Only a regular engagement between the two South Asian neighbours, both of whom possess nuclear weapons, could bring this change, said the department’s spokesman John Kirby.

The Indian and Pakistani prime ministers will get a chance to discuss bilateral relations next week in the Russian city of Ufa.

Both leaders will be there to attend a summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and their senior aides have indicated that they could also have a separate, bilateral meeting too.

Asked how would the United States view such a meeting, Mr Kirby said: “I don’t want to get ahead of a meeting that hasn’t happened … that would be foolhardy for me to try to do that here publicly.”

But he recalled that last week Secretary of State John Kerry had publicly urged the two countries to improve their ties, telling them that “relations between India and Pakistan are important to us”.

He said that South Asia was an important region, which faced many challenges. And there were “lots of common challenges that both countries can continue to work on” if they stayed engaged.

“But many of them — all of them —need to be worked on between India and Pakistan, and we’d like to see those tensions reduced,” he said.

A journalist reminded him that last month when relations between the two South Asian nations were particularly tense, Secretary Kerry had telephoned Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to convey his concerns.

“Has the secretary’s call have an impact on the region? Have the tensions reduced?” the journalist asked.

“I don’t know that Secretary Kerry would credit his one phone call for some new trend in security relations,” said the US official. “But it is important to him to continue to have a dialogue with his counterparts in India and in Pakistan because the issues are so important to regional stability.”

That’s why “it’s safe to say that you can continue to see him engaged on this, and there’ll be more dialogue”, Mr Kirby said.

Published in Dawn, July 4th, 2015

On a mobile phone? Get the Dawn Mobile App: Apple Store | Google Play