Indian external affairs minister S.M. Krishna traveled to Islamabad last week for talks with Pakistani Foreign Minister Qureshi and returned empty handed. Pakistan, as usual, played the victim of India's alleged intransigence. Three days later Hillary Clinton, the U.S. Secretary of State came to Islamabad carrying goodies ($500 million as first installment of the $7.5 billion) and presided over a meeting between Pakistan and Afghanistan where they signed a transit agreement between the two countries that specifically excluded any shipment of Indian goods to Afghanistan through Pakistani territory. I find it mind-numbing to see such clumsiness of our External Affairs ministry.
Qureshi knew ahead of time that Hillary Clinton was to visit Islamabad begging and bribing Pakistan for its support in Afghanistan and push Karzai to sign the Af-Pak agreement. With this knowledge, Qureshi had no interest in reaching any agreement with India and he wanted to show that Pakistanis can beat India in diplomacy and check-mate India. Our diplomats in South Block were clueless when they traveled to Islamabad.
India had strategic discussions with United States last month and it is not clear
if anything was accomplished. If those talks were successful, why would Clinton come to Islamabad with goodies so soon after the breakdown of talks between Qureshi and Krishna and preside over Af-Pak agreement which disenfranchised India in Afghanistan? All the development works that India did in Afghanistan over the last several years have come to nothing.
Indian team had so many trump cards in their hands(1,2): the ISI involvement in the 11/26 attack in Mumbai as revealed by Headley, the information of Pakistani Navy frogmen training the Mumbai terrorists, ISI providing money to LeT to purchase the boat to travel from Karachi to Mumbai, the ISI being in control and coordinating the attack from the beginning to the end, ISI colluding with Haqqani network, the notorious group which raised alarm in the US Senate last week, and on and on. If Pakistan is not responsive to these many evidences, is there any use in talking to them? So called "soft power" that Congress politicians talk about does not work beyond our borders (it never worked even within the borders).
Indians are under a stupid assumption that the dream of a prosperous India cannot be realized without a peace agreement with Pakistan. Pakistan knows this very well and is carrying out its usual blackmail as it has been doing for the last sixty years. By the manner in which they handled the talks they essentially declared that they have no interest in a working relationship with India on mutual terms because of their confidence that United States would bankroll them and China would provide diplomatic support. It is about time to wake up from the our Gandhian day dreams and face up to the world of realpolitik.
Reference:
1. http://news.rediff.com/report/2010/jul/19/pakistan-navy-trained-2611-terrorists-headley.htm
2. http://www.hindu.com/2010/07/20/stories/2010072062181200.htm
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