New ambience for bilateral ties

As these lines are being written the Indian Foreign Minister, Pranab Mukherjee and Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon are winding up a visit to Islamabad that shows few concrete achievements for now but promises much for future. This apparent dichotomy needs explanation.

The immediate gains are modest as neither side had aimed high as far as the customary composite dialogue was concerned. At another level, the visit has been highly successful. It should have provided answers to Indian questions as to who wields power in Pakistan and in what hierarchical order. This was an important clarification to seek as India had negotiated politically only with President Pervez Musharraf since the failed summit in Agra. Pakistan's general election of February 18 changed the power structure and India needed to explore and identify the new configuration in Islamabad.

For once, Pakistan rose to the occasion. It greatly widened the scope of consultations by Mukherjee. In a hectic schedule he conferred separately with his counterpart, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Prime Minister Yousuf Gillani, People Party's chairman Asif Zardari, Pakistan Muslim Leagues Nawaz Sharif and Awami National Party (ANP)'s Asfandyar Wali Khan. He also called on Musharraf. This has raised the peace process to a high political level with the promise that the hard grind of the officials' committees would be able to count on a fresh resolve of top leadership in both the countries to find peaceful negotiated solutions for all contentious issues.

The message from Pakistan's elected leaders has an unprecedented clarity: it is ready for a grand reconciliation if India was ready too. India and Pakistan can move from a mere containment of conflicts to an era of doing things together particularly in crucial areas such as import of energy from outside South Asia and fighting violence and terrorism together. Here is an opportunity to transform bilateral relations through a process backed by the people.

The litmus test is the fulfilment of expectation that India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will at long last undertake the much awaited visit to Pakistan during this year. There are reports that Manmohan Singh is focused on problems associated with Indo-US nuclear deal and a possible rapprochement with Pakistan in a period of time that would take India to the next general election.

If so the months ahead will test his commitment to his own vision of a large zone of cooperation encompassing the two countries, Afghanistan and the lands beyond.

Ground realities in the region continue to underline the imperative of India and Pakistan working together to resolve a raft of problems. India and Iran are building up bilateral trade fast. Iran's communication links with Central Asia and the Herat region of Afghanistan are improving rapidly and India hopes to use Iranian sea ports to take advantage of them. Overland transit through Pakistan, however, remains a much cheaper option. Iran, on its own, is investing substantially in its railway network up to Zahidan. Similar improvement on the Pakistani side will open a route of considerable potential from South Asia to Zahidan-Baam-Turkey. There are resumed negotiations on the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline that can greatly alleviate the present energy crunch.

Land bridge

In Afghanistan, which provides the land bridge for the gas from Turkmenistan, electricity from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan and for other ventures, India and Pakistan must not work at cross purposes. India and China plan an exponential increase in bilateral trade during the next decade. Pakistan has a similar blue print. There is a new realisation that relations of India and Pakistan with China, the emerging economic giant, need not be a zero sum game.

There is some disappointment in Pakistan that Mukherjee's visit did not make public any significant progress in resolving the Kashmir issue. The truth of the matter is that Kashmir has never figured substantively in the official level composite dialogue and had been tacitly left to the secret channel established after Atal Bihari Vajpayee's landmark trip to Pakistan in January 2004.

India and Pakistan seem to be irrevocably committed to the peace process and are exploring avenues of greater cooperation especially in the economic field. There are still hardliners with inflexible positions that have wrecked negotiations during the past 60 years. But there is an overwhelming desire to move forward decisively and the year 2008 may well be remembered when India and the elected leaders of Pakistan were able to do so.

Tanvir Ahmad Khan is a former foreign secretary of Pakistan. Currently he is working as the Director General of the Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad.