RAWALPINDI: The Secretary-level Indo-Pakistan talks on Farakka issue today [Feb 25] made some progress in the sense that the two sides succeeded in evolving an agreed agenda on the set of proposals made by Pakistan and amendments suggested by India. However, both sides were acting with extreme caution and nothing was officially given out regarding the agenda or the trend of the talks.

The discussions today continued for over five hours spreading over two sessions and will be resumed tomorrow morning. Today was the second day of the talks.

Though an agreed agenda has been evolved yet it could not be said till this evening that the talks were out of the woods and were moving towards any meeting point. The Indians were still sticking to their position that the data supplied by Pakistan amounted to reconstruction of history and could not be accepted by them as basis for an agreement. They were also believed to have insisted that there should be an agreement regarding the exchange of data on the Harding Bridge like the one regarding the flow of data on Farakka.

Besides, according to some neutral diplomatic sources here, the Indians were keen to have from Pakistan, outside the current talks, some undertaking that any concessions by them on the Farakka side would lead to discussions on some other issues which were not in any way connected with the Farakka dispute and could be settled only through decisions of a political nature.

However, Pakistan delegation is believed to have indicated to their Indian counterparts that it was helpless in this regard and these matters should be taken up at the appropriate level.

Published in Dawn, February 26th, 2020