Sushma visit hinged on NSA talks
Sources say govt wanted parleys before foreign minister visited Islamabad
NEW DELHI: Talks between the national security advisers of India and Pakistan took place on December 6 in Bangkok before foreign minister Sushma Swaraj travelled to Islamabad for the Heart of Asia summit after New Delhi asked for the events to be held in this order.
Government sources have told HT that India wanted the parleys to resume so Swaraj had some foundation to prepare for the resumption of the composite dialogue process, which finally happened during her Pakistan visit.
South Block had earlier turned down a proposal from Pakistan for a meeting between the foreign ministers in New York in the last weeks of September, suggesting that such an exercise could prove futile without Nsa-level talks preceding it as agreed between the prime ministers of the two countries at a meeting in Russia this year.
“We then heard from Pakistan that an Nsa-level meeting would be difficult at this stage because retired lieutenant general Nasser Khan Janjua had just taken over the role and might not be prepared to lay the foundation for the resumption of the dialogue process,” said government sources.
Janjua was appointed Pakistan’s national security adviser in late October and Islamabad suggested that foreign secretary-level talks could be held instead.
New Delhi turned down this proposal too, but recommended that the foreign secretaries could accompany the NSAS during their interaction in Bangkok. Pakistan agreed to this offer.
“We were categorical that the Nsa-level talks should happen before Swaraj’s visit to Islamabad. We appreciate that Pakistan realised its importance and agreed,” a source said.
“The dialogue process which got interrupted after the joint statement between the two prime ministers in Ufa in July, was unsuccessfully attempted to be revived in New York and finally saw the light of day in Bangkok.”
New Delhi, government leaders admit, remains sceptical about the outcome of the resumed dialogue process and has decided to refrain from presenting it as a breakthrough and seeking credit for it.
India’s prime concern behind resuming the talks was to avoid creating an impression before the international community that it was totally reluctant to speak to Pakistan. NEW DELHI: The idea might put one on the wrong side of parliamentarians, prone as they are to using their privileges to block free-thinking heretics, but lawmakers owe to posterity an uncensored compendium of the highs and lows of House proceedings over the years.
For the dirt that sullies the shores after low tides in our debating chambers — Parliament and assemblies across states — is proof of what ails our legislative discourse. It isn’t merely a lack of etiquette, the absence of the right lexicon to articulate disagreement. The problem is of the poverty of ideas, the derangement striking at democracy’s core that mandates engagement, if not confluence, of differing perceptions.
The creeping canker of nasty discourse has gotten deep into a system that was once so ably nurtured by the makers of our constitution and their early successors. Yet the grave erosion of that rich legacy is kept out of the institutional memory of our legislatures.
That brings one to the practise of expunging comments deemed unbecoming of the dignity of the House and its members. The question, however, is: to know the downside, mustn’t we show the downside?
Will the real deterrence not be in naming and shaming before future generations all those who