It will not merely be a hand-shake but a full-fledged meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari here on Tuesday on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit.
The Indian position on talks with Pakistan has apparently undergone a dramatic change in the past one week.
Only on Friday, Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon had indicated to the media that the meeting between the leaders of India and Pakistan would just be an opportunity to shake hands and exchange pleasantries since the two would be in the same room, same place at the same time for the SCO meet.
But as the Prime Minister arrived here this evening for the back-to-back SCO and Brazil-India-Russia-China (BRIC) Summit, it was officially announced that Manmohan Singh and Zardari would meet for nearly half an hour on Tuesday afternoon at the Hotel Hyatt Regency during which they are expected to discuss all issues that have bedevilled relations between the two countries.
What perhaps settled the issue in favour of a comprehensive meeting between Singh and Zardari was a personal request from the latter, conveyed to the External Affairs Ministry by Pakistan High Commissioner to India Shahid Malik.
In his speech in Parliament also last week, the Prime Minister had given subtle hints of India’s willingness to engage Pakistan.“It is in our vital interest to try again and make peace with Pakistan but it takes two hands to clap,” he had stated, clearly spelling out that India wanted Pakistan to act against ‘jehadi’ elements misusing the Pakistani territory to launch terrorist strikes in India.
Officials accompanying the Prime Minister, however, declined to describe the meeting between the two leaders as a structured dialogue. “There is no question of resuming the dialogue with Pakistan until Pakistan
takes credible action action against terrorism and brings to justice the perpetrators of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks,” they said.
Asked if the meeting between the two leaders had been arranged under any pressure from the US, the officials maintained that there had been no pressure from the Americans on India for starting talks with Pakistan. “We are meeting because we don’t want to give terrorist a veto to decide the course of India-Pakistan relations,” they said.
The officials also ridiculed a suggestion that the meeting would mean that the Indian position on talks with Pakistan had become soft. “We don’t feel shy of talking to Pakistan. We have a position and we will convey it forcefully. There is no question of being nervous about it.”
At tomorrow’s meeting too, the Prime Minister will convey to Zardari that the dialogue process, called off by India following the 26/11 Mumbai mayhem, could not be resumed until Pakistan appeared showed its sincerity in dealing with the masterminds of the attacks. “For us, terrorism is the core issue between India and Pakistan,” the Indian officials asserted.
In a statement on his arrival here, Manmohan Singh, who is on his first overseas visit during his second term as Prime Minister, said there were issues which concerned both India and the SCO, such as terrorism, extremism and cooperation in areas of energy security, infrastructure development, agriculture, transportation, etc.
