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Musharraf exit won't affect India talks - analysts

Strategic analysts feel the abrupt resignation of Pervez Musharraf as president of Pakistan on Monday will not directly impact the India-Pakistan peace process.

  • IANS
  • Published: 23:21 August 18, 2008
  • Gulf News

New Delhi: Strategic analysts feel the abrupt resignation of Pervez Musharraf as president of Pakistan on Monday will not directly impact the India-Pakistan peace process.

"At the official level, there will be no direct impact as Pakistan's civilian government has not said anything against the composite dialogue process that started in 2004," said Commodore (retired) C. Uday Bhaskar, former deputy director of the defence ministry-sponsored think tank, the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA).

"However, there is anxiety as to how the autonomous factors in Pakistan, including those responsible for the Kabul [embassy] attack, respond," he added.

"Will they [the autonomous factors] step up anti-India movements? Who will control the ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence agency]? The anxiety will remain unless clarity is reached in Pakistan about the relation between the army and the civilian government and between the army and these autonomous factors," Bhaskar said.

A senior army official said, speaking on condition of anonymity, quipped: "Musharraf had become irrelevant to the peace process as a civilian government is in place,"

Echoing this opinion, Brigadier (retired) Gurmeet Kanwal, director of the Centre for Land Warfare Studies, said: "In the long run, dealing with a civilian government in Pakistan is in India's best interest.

"The Pakistani Army has a stranglehold over the country's polity and it has not changed. The peace process between India and Pakistan has been stagnant for the last one year or so and will remain so for another six to eight months till there is a new government in place in India."

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