PAKISTAN PRESIDENT Asif Ali Zardari and Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh agreed in New Delhi yesterday to adopt a step-by-step approach to resolve bilateral differences and build on recently improved ties in their relations.
“We have a number of issues and we are willing to find tactical, pragmatic solutions to all those issues; that’s the message that President Zardari and I wish to convey,” Mr Singh said in the brief public statement the leaders made after meeting at the Indian prime minister’s residence.
Relations between India and Pakistan should become normal as it was their common desire, said Mr Singh adding that he had accepted an invitation from Mr Zardari to visit Pakistan soon.
“We would like to have better relations with India. We have spoken on all topics that we could have spoken about and we are hoping to meet on Pakistani soil very soon,” said Mr Zardari, the first Pakistani president to visit India in seven years.
Despite the intractable nature of their differences, the two leaders stressed the importance of maintaining the dialogue that began haltingly last year after the bitterness following the 2008 strike on Bombay (Mumbai) by 10 Pakistani gunmen in which 165 people died.
Although on a private trip to visit a revered Muslim shrine at Ajmer in western India, Mr Zardari and his 40-member entourage, which included senior Pakistani officials, used the stopover to interact with Indian leaders and advance the process of normalising mutual ties.
Indian officials said Mr Singh and Mr Zardari noted the progress made in facilitating bilateral trade and agreed to improve people-to-people contact through liberalised visa regulations.
India is also likely to offer power-strapped Pakistan electricity and petroleum products across the western Punjab frontier.
Analysts from both countries agreed that lasting peace between Pakistan and India would also aid the perilous transition in Afghanistan after the majority of Nato and US combat forces leave the war-torn region, as planned in 2014.
The neighbours, who have fought three wars since independence in 1947 and an 11-week-long border skirmish in 1999 that threatened to escalate into nuclear war, aim to resume the “composite dialogue” last held in May 2008.
Launched in 2004, it focused broadly on eight contentious issues. These included the northern disputed Kashmir province divided between the two sides but claimed by both, unresolved maritime boundaries, cross-border terrorism, narcotics smuggling, nuclear and conventional military confidence-building measures and economic co-operation.
Disputed frontiers in the marshy Sir Creek region alongside the Arabian Sea and the 28-year- old military stand-off along the 21,000ft-high northern Siachen glacier were also part of the dialogue that made incremental progress before being terminated after the Bombay attack.
Mr Zardari yesterday insisted that the dispute over Siachen must be resolved – this is where a massive avalanche at the weekend buried some 135 Pakistani soldiers.
Siachen is often described as the world’s highest battlefield, a snowy “moonscape” where thousands of Indian and Pakistani troops have been stationed since 1984 with scores dying each year from harsh and inclement weather rather than in battle.
Mr Zardari was also accompanied by his son, Bilawal Zardari Bhutto (24) who stood behind the leaders at the briefing in what commentators said was an indication of his developing role in Pakistani politics.
Mr Bhutto heads Pakistan’s ruling Pakistan People’s Party but, since his mother Benazir Bhutto’s assassination in December 2007, has remained in the background, studying at Oxford and returning only recently to Pakistan.
