You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Submit your comments on this article
India-Pakistan
Pak, India restore relations
2003-05-03
NNI: President General Pervez Masharraf Friday presided over an important high level meeting in the Army House that has decided to restore air links and also to reappoint High Commissioner to India. "A High Commissioner (Ambassador) will be reappointed to India," Pakistani Foreign Minister, Khurshid Mehmoud Kasuri told the reporters. The Prime Minister House in Islamabad has also confirmed a meeting of Prime Minister Jamali with President General Pervez Masharraf that was also attended by Kasuri. The meeting has discussed international, regional and national affairs. It has also decided to appoint High Commissioner in Pakistani Mission at New Delhi in response to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's announcement in the Lower House of Indian Parliament this morning. President Masharraf convened the emergent meeting after the announcement made by the Indian Prime Minister Vajpyaee this morning. Prime Minister Jamali, Foreign Minister Kasuri, Foreign Secretary Riaz Khokhar, Spokesman of the Foreign Office and Additional Secretary Aziz Ahmed Khan and other senior military and civil officials, attended the meeting.

The meeting welcomed the announcement of PM Vajpayee in which he had said to appoint Indian High Commissioner in Islamabad and restore air links with Pakistan on a reciprocal basis. "Pakistan has decided to restore air links with Indian besides naming a high commissioner to New Delhi," a highly placed source in Foreign Office has said. Musharraf in an interview to a London Based TV network has hoped that Pakistan and India will soon start dialogue for normalization. "This will be a new beginning of ties between the two South Asia countries that would be in the larger interest of over a billion people in Indian and Pakistan," Musharraf said.

Vajpayee, 78 hoped to leave a legacy of peace between India and Pakistan before end of his tenure "and even before I die." The two countries went on war footing last year after India blamed Pakistan for an attack by Islamic militants on the Indian Parliament in December 2001. Pakistan denied involvement. Tensions eased after intense diplomacy by the United States and Britain and rest of the international community including Russia, Japan, China, France and many other countries. Four days after the first announcement of Vajpayee in which he had offered Pakistan for holding conditional talks, Jamali phoned the Indian leader in the first such high-level contact in almost two years. Vajpayee said he was trying for "a third time" to make permanent peace with Pakistan. In 1999, he traveled to Lahore to meet with then-Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, but a few months later the two nations were involved in what India calls the Kargil War in the mountains of Kashmir. Vajpayee invited Musharraf to talks in the Taj Mahal city of Agra in July 2001. There were no agreements as a joint declaration was not issued when Indian authorities reduced to issue the same agreed between President Mascara and Vajpayee.
All this is, of course, a good thing. If the two countries can normalize relations and reduce the amount of irrational hatred, especially on the Pak side, it will go far to reducing the overall level of tension world-wide. For those very reasons, the jihadis will now commence to turn themselves inside out to sabotage the moves, in the same manner Hamas, al-Aqsa and Hezbollah are doing with regard to Mahmoud Abbas' accession in Paleostine. Qazi especially will be ranting and raving about the Heathen Hindoo, the perfidious ways of Delhi, and the sterling virtues of the jihadis, who are all home-grown Kashmiris. Syed Salahuddin will try for even larger numbers of corpses in Kashmir, preferably pilgrims. Hafiz Saeed will point out that real Muslim states rely on jihad for everything, to include the production of toilet paper, and Lashkar e-Taiba (also run by Hafiz) will try again for a major hit inside India, something on the order of the attack on parliament. So this is also a bad thing...
Posted by:Fred Pruitt

#1  As an India (living in the UK) I'm all for peace but I just can't understand what Vajpayee is doing. He is rewarding Pakland for all the terrorism, he is saying that terrorism works because we will always give in to it. Remeber when Israel pulled out of Lebanon, it only emboldened the Pale terrorists.
Unfortunately I am very sceptical. As long the architect of the Kargil conflict (Pervez) is in power I see very little hope for peace. At the time, India and Pakistan had the friendliest relations for decades and there were genuine peace movement, at least for India. Pervez was the ONE guy who did every thing to sabotage it. My simple question is this, what has changed in Pervez. Why should we believe that the guy who sabotaged the peace process and brought about the worst period in Indo-Pak relations is all for Peace now. Why should we trust him, he is ultimately responsible for the hundreds of dead Indian soldier killed during Kargil.

Just my Thoughts
Posted by: rg117   2003-05-03 10:56:04  

00:00