ISLAMABAD: Foreign secretaries of Pakistan and India will on Tuesday try to find the way out of the current impasse in bilateral ties when they meet in Delhi on the sidelines of Heart of Asia (HoA) senior officials’ conference.
Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry will travel to India on a daylong visit for attending the event and bilateral meetings on the margins of the conference including one with India.
The two countries had been, in the aftermath of Pathankot terrorist attack, struggling to schedule a meeting of their foreign secretaries for deciding the timetable for the newly agreed Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue (CBD).
India and Pakistan had coincidentally agreed on restarting their bilateral dialogue under the new format and title of CBD at the last Heart of Asia ministerial meeting held in Islamabad last December, where India was represented by its External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.
The agreement on the new talks’ framework had then infused optimism in the ties and was soon followed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s surprise stopover in Lahore. But, soon afterwards Pathankot happened, which was blamed on Pakistan-based militants, and the seemingly smooth progress towards dialogue resumption began to flounder.
Secretary Chaudhry’s trip would be the first high-level visit to Delhi from Islamabad since the Pathankot incident although a team of investigators from different investigation agencies earlier travelled to India for collecting evidence linked to allegations that militants from Pakistan took part in the attack.
The two secretaries would meet in the morning before the start of the conference.
“Bilateral issues would be discussed at the meeting and the two secretaries will see how they can get past Pathankot and move towards the agreed bilateral dialogue,” a diplomatic source said.
Hopes were not very high about a breakthrough, with one diplomat dismissing the scheduled meeting between Mr Chaudhry and his Indian counterpart S. Jaishankar as another sideline event.
But there was a virtual consensus among both Pakistani and Indian diplomats who spoke to Dawn that even if the meeting does not achieve a concrete breakthrough it may help ease the ties.
India is expected to request Pakistan during the meeting for a reciprocal visit by the Indian National Investigation Agency for investigating Pathankot attack.
HoA, a regional initiative launched in 2011, is aimed at encouraging economic and security cooperation between Afghanistan and its neighbours for dealing with the common challenges of terrorism, extremism and poverty.
Pakistan, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan and the United Arab Emirates are part of the initiative, which is supported by 17 other, predominantly Western, countries, and 12 international organisations — all of whom attend the HoA meetings as observers.
“Pakistan looks forward to active participation in the forthcoming Senior Officials Meeting of the Heart of Asia process reflecting our commitment to efforts for promoting long-term peace and stability in `Afghanistan,” an FO statement said.
Published in Dawn, April 26th, 2016
