NEW DELHI, Oct 9: Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee could visit Pakistan as soon as the shooting war with Afghanistan abates, amid indications that a global consensus was shaping to nudge both countries towards getting their uneasy relationship to look up, diplomatic sources said on Tuesday.
They said a telephone conversation by President Musharraf to Prime Minister Vajpayee on Tuesday, their first direct talk after a summit meeting in Agra in July ended inconclusively, had considerably helped ease the mistrust between the two leaders.
In an unusual gesture the two leaders agreed that India would send relief material to Pakistan by the land corridor as an expression of its solidarity with the anti-terrorist coalition of which Islamabad is a key member.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell has said that both countries could use the opportunity in the ongoing campaign against terrorism, to embark on a new course of fruitful relations. Powell’s thoughts are expected to be further fleshed out when he visits both the countries in the third week of October.
“The world wants to see India and Pakistan fighting jointly as the bulwark of the anti-terrorist coalition, not just against the Taliban regime, but against terrorism everywhere,” one diplomat told Dawn. “General Powell’s remarks should be seen in this light. We believe the Indian prime minister has the sagacity to make it happen.”
A meeting between Mr Vajpayee and Gen Musharraf was scheduled during the UN General-Assembly session in September but was aborted after the terrorist attacks on New York.
An Indian foreign ministry spokesperson commenting on Powell’s remarks to Newsweek magazine said: “As far as India is concerned, if you were to examine the statements made by our government during Lahore before Agra and thereafter, we have always approached the question of normalization of relationship with Pakistan in a very comprehensive rounded manner and we are prepared to make initiative to further strengthen confidence and build trust between the two countries.” Spokesperson Nirupama Rao said it was necessary for Pakistan to make “adequate and satisfactory response to meet the gestures that we have made.”
She however played down the global interest in India’s mending of fences with Pakistan, saying “there is no way out for India and Pakistan but to discuss and to resolve and settle the outstanding problems in bilateral relations, bilaterally.”
Rao evaded directly commenting on Gen Musharraf’s renewed invitation to Mr Vajpayee to visit Islamabad, saying merely that the subject did figure in the telephonic conversation between the two leaders.
“The prime minister has offered humanitarian assistance for Afghan refugees in Pakistan. The possibility of it being transported by the overland route was suggested by the prime minister and the officials of the two countries are getting in touch with each another to find about modalities,” Rao said.
Gen Musharraf had sent planeloads of relief material to India when a devastating earthquake visited Gujarat in January.
Rao said the need to continue dialogue between the two countries was mentioned and both leaders did agree that it was necessary for India and Pakistan to continue the process of dialogue.
She said Mr Vajpayee had “made the point that it was necessary for the two countries to work for and all round development of relations and that holding the relations hostage or focusing just on a single point agenda like Kashmir would not really help this process go forward. That was really the focus of discussion.”
Gen Musharraf’s remarks telling India to lay off that rankled India no end, appeared somewhat to have been relegated to history.
As Rao said of Musharraf’s phone call to Mr Vajpayee: “It vindicates our argument and our point of view that India and Pakistan should continue to dialogue with each other and that there is really no way forward except to maintain communication and to discuss all round developments of relations without a focus on one single issue.”