Thaindian News

New Delhi, Feb 25 (IANS) The foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan met here Thursday, the first such formal engagement since the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, amid hopes that Islamabad will move faster against anti-India terror outfits and the 26/11 attackers to keep the dialogue open.
Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao greeted her Pakistani counterpart Salman Bashir at the Hyderabad House as the two top diplomats sat down for closed-door one-on-one talks, aimed at breaking the post-Mumbai deadlock in bilateral ties.

“We look forward to our talks,” Rao told reporters.

“Hyderabad House is a familiar venue. We look forward to a very good constructive engagement,” a smiling Bashir added before going inside for the talks.

The interaction between Rao and Bashir lasted nearly one-and-a-half hours, indicating that the two sides were trying hard to bridge differences to come out with a positive outcome.

This was followed by delegation-level talks. No joint statement is expected at the end of the talks.

Setting a positive tone, the two sides have made it clear that although they have their differing core concerns, they are going into these crucial talks with “open mind”.

For India, the core concern is terrorism and the alleged use of Pakistani territory by anti-India terror outfits, but it is willing to discuss other issues. Pakistan has made it clear that it will focus on the Kashmir dispute and issues like sharing of river waters.

Kashmir is on the agenda, Pakistan Foreign Office spokesperson Abdul Basit told a TV channel an hour before the talks began.

Pakistan is likely to rake up allegations of the alleged complicity of India in the insurgency in Balochistan.

The Indian side is likely to highlight renewed anti-India activities of Hafiz Saeed, founder of the Jamaat-ud Dawa and the suspected mastermind of the Mumbai carnage who has stepped up his anti-India rhetoric since the announcement of talks early this month.

India has limited expectations from the talks and would like Islamabad to give a fresh commitment to curb anti-India outfits and bring the perpetrators of the 26/11 carnage to justice expeditiously, said government sources.

The outcome of the talks is expected to determine the future trajectory of engagement between the two neighbours.

A positive outcome could set the stage for summit-level talks between leaders of the two countries on the sidelines of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit in Thimphu in April and brighten the possibilities of resumption of a broader dialogue.

Ahead of the talks, External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna Wednesday stressed that the future of engagement will depend upon “an environment free of terror or threat of terror”.

“We are going into talks with an open mind, but are fully conscious of the limitations imposed by the trust-deficit, post-Mumbai,” said a government source.

This is the first meeting between Rao and Bashir since the two last met on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York in September last year.

Despite the post-Mumbai freeze, the foreign secretaries and foreign ministers of the two estranged neighbours have met earlier on the sidelines of multilateral summits. The interactions focused primarily on actions taken by Islamabad against the 26/11 terrorists.

This time around, the two foreign secretaries are meeting for the first time in the Indian capital for an open-ended dialogue in the Indian capital.

The two prime ministers also met at Sharm-el-Sheikh in Egypt last year, leading to a controversial joint statement delinking composite dialogue from actions by Pakistan against terror.