ISLAMABAD, May 6: US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage is scheduled to arrive here on Wednesday evening with his key aides for top-level consultations with the Government of Pakistan.
Mr Armitage’s visit to Pakistan is part of his peace mission to the South Asian region to take forward recent initiatives taken by leaders in India and Pakistan to ease tensions and normalise diplomatic ties between the two countries.
The US deputy secretary of state will be leading a nine-member team that will include among others Ms Kara Bue, deputy assistant secretary of state for political and military affairs, Ms Christina Rocca, Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia and Mr Paul Kelly, Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs.
During his stay in the capital Mr Armitage will call on the President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Jamali. He will also meet Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri and Foreign Secretary Riaz Khokhar at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs where delegation-level talks will be held between the two sides.
The official talks will begin on May 8 and the following day Mr Armitage will leave for Afghanistan along with other members of his team, a senior official told Dawn, adding that from there (Afghanistan) they would proceed to the Indian capital.
Officials in Islamabad said there was no fixed agenda for the talks but maintained that the “main emphasis” of the talks would be Pakistan-India relations and early resumption of high-level dialogue between the two countries to discuss all outstanding issues including the core issue of Kashmir.
Noting that talks would cover also bilateral and other important regional issues like Iraq and Afghanistan, a senior Pakistan official pointed out that “bilateral issues will not be very high on the agenda.”
The US State Department’s spokesman said last week that the Bush administration hoped that the visit would promote “peace and stability” in the region.
Sources said Pakistan would be raising with the US officials the issue of early release of Pakistanis detained in Gauntanamo Bay, Cuba.
There is optimism in political and diplomatic circles that Armitage’s “peace mission” would lead to some concrete steps towards starting top-level negotiations between Pakistan and India.
Anwar Iqbal adds from Washington:
Meanwhile, US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage left for South Asia on Monday for talks with Indian and Pakistani leaders less than a week after they agreed to restore full diplomatic and air links after 16 months.
“I don’t want to leave the impression that we are in the role of mediator,” Mr Armitage told reporters before he left Washington. “Our job is to keep a congenial atmosphere.”
He also said that he was not going to the Subcontinent with “a big plan for the future.”
Talking to journalists after Mr Armitage’s departure, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher also tried to play down the media hype about a possible breakthrough in the India-Pakistan standoff.
Rejecting the suggestion that Mr Armitage was going to the region with a big plan to break the Kashmir impasse, the spokesman said: “It’s important that we all focus on the fact that people who live in Kashmir need a right to live in peace.”
He, however, said that the United States was urging both sides to discuss all issues, including Kashmir, if bilateral talks resume after two years.
“It’s important that the two countries address all the issues, including Kashmir,” he added.
Diplomatic sources in Washington say that during this week’s talks with Pakistani and Indian officials, the US delegation would like to focus on Kashmir as well.
The Americans were urging the two rival nations that instead of looking for a major breakthrough, they should try to gradually improve their relations, the sources said.
The Americans were urging Pakistanis not to wait for the resolution of the Kashmir dispute for resuming bilateral trade. Instead they are asking them to normalize relations first and then seek a resolution to the 56-year old dispute.
To the Indians, the Americans are saying that while they will ask Pakistan to stop “cross-border infiltrations” into occupied Kashmir, they were not going to allow an Iraq-style invasion of Pakistan to settle this issue.
President Bush, in his victory speech last week, warned regimes with weapons of mass destruction and ties to terrorist groups, they had better look out. And soon after the speech, some Indian officials said that this description fits Pakistan.
Mr Armitage, however, indicated that he would be telling the Indian and Pakistani governments that Washington did not believe that any military action could settle the Kashmir dispute.