Will Indo-Pak relations ever be good?

Yet another attempt at kick-starting the dialogue process with Pakistan has come a cropper. Viewing the televised Qureshi-Krishna joint press conference live from Islamabad was as amusing as it was upsetting. Shah Mehmood Qureshi, the foreign minister of Pakistan snubbed his Indian counterpart in his characteristically arrogant fashion. And, our external affairs minister, the meek-as-a-mouse S.M. Krishna sat next to him looking quite out of depth in the arena of international diplomacy. Perhaps, he would have been better off crossing swords with the likes of Deve Gowda in his native Kannada in the Vidhan Soudha in Bangalore. He seemed totally ill-equipped to match his wits with Qureshi, the hawkish, India-baiting, feudal from Pakistani Punjab.

It was not an anti-climax that the contrived bonhomie between the two interlocutors evaporated as quickly as rainwater in a desert. The press conference soon degenerated into a public display of the complexities and contradictions that plague Indo-Pak relations. It became clear that the talks had failed to make much headway. Shah Mehmood Qureshi’s public pronouncements only added fuel to fire. While his Indian counterpart was still on Pakistani soil, Qureshi queered the pitch further by claiming that Krishna did not have a clear mandate and that he kept taking phone calls from New Delhi. He, of course, retracted a part of that statement subsequently, by clarifying that he had not meant to say Krishna himself took calls, but much damage had already been done by then.

Obviously, talks progressed well when proceedings commenced. A joint press statement acceptable to both sides and addressing each other’s core concerns seemed a certainty. However, somewhere along the way, things seemed to have gone horribly wrong. General Kayani latched on to the opportunity provided by our indiscreet home secretary, G.K. Pillai. In an open interaction with The Indian Express on the eve of the talks, Pillai had blamed the ISI for masterminding and controlling the entire 26/11 operation in Mumbai. General Kayani met President Zardari and Prime Minister Gilani before S.M. Krishna could be granted an audience with them. Whatever transpired between the Pakistani general and Pakistan's civilian leadership at that time, the atmosphere became irreversibly vitiated after that.

Expectedly, our opposition parties back home in India cried foul and wasted no time in denouncing the government for having bent over backwards to talk with an intransigent Pakistan. Qureshi was dubbed “uncouth” and accused of being somebody who was “lacking in diplomatic etiquette”. This was not entirely unjustified, given the man’s penchant for giving a go-by to diplomatic niceties when it comes to expressing his views on India and Indian leaders. The outcome of these parleys was perhaps made to look even worse than it actually was due to the media hype that built up quickly over them.

So then, has nothing been gained from this latest round of talks between the two countries? Are we back to square one? Is there a way forward? Can we break the deadlock? Is peace possible? Can Indo-Pak relations ever be good? I will be considering these questions in the next few posts…