India and Pakistan to resume peace process

Nuclear rivals India and Pakistan are today resuming talks to end a conflict that has in the past five decades often defined – and destabilised – South Asia.

New Delhi says it won’t seriously consider concessions on the most divisive issues – especially divided Kashmir – until Pakistan cracks down on the Islamic militants allegedly behind terror attacks in India, such as the Mumbai train bombings that killed 207 people in July.

The Pakistanis meanwhile say progress on Kashmir – claimed by both countries and the focus of two of their three wars – would help them rein in militants.

While there’s deep mistrust on both sides – and frustration with the perceived intransigence of the other – the nuclear-armed rivals will today get back down to negotiating when Indian foreign secretary Shiv Shanker Menon and his Pakistani counterpart Riaz Mohammed Khan start two days of talks in New Delhi.

International pressure, especially from the US, has helped push the neighbours back to the negotiating table after India suspended the talks, claiming Pakistani intelligence played a role in the Mumbai bombings.

Washington sees India as an emerging ally, and American companies are investing billions of dollars in the country. Pakistan is a long-time ally and a linchpin in the war on terror.

“We hope they can make progress on some of the big political issues,” US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Richard Boucher said last week in New Delhi.

Another conflict with Pakistan would certainly undercut India’s economic growth – pegged at 8% this year – and deal a setback to its aspirations of becoming a great power.

US officials say privately that America didn’t back India’s bid last year for a permanent UN Security Council seat in part because of New Delhi’s rivalry with Islamabad.

Pakistan, meanwhile, has its own problems – keeping up with India’s much larger military is a serious drain on the country’s resources, and distracts president Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s government from more pressing domestic matters, namely keeping Islamic extremists in check.

Relations between the two countries have been hostile since the partition of the subcontinent on independence from Britain in 1947.

Kashmir lies at the heart of their rivalry, and New Delhi accuses Pakistan of supporting Islamic militants who have fought Indian security forces there since 1989. Pakistan acknowledges the militants are based on its territory, but insists it only gives them diplomatic, not material, backing.

The peace process began in 2004, and has helped ease tensions.

However, India stalled the talks after the Mumbai attack, and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh only agreed in September to resume them after agreeing with Musharraf to create a joint anti-terrorism “mechanism”.

Asked why India agreed to return to the negotiating table even as New Delhi insists Pakistani intelligence was involved in the Mumbai attacks, an Indian official said: “We are not going to let the dialogue process be derailed by terrorists.”

On the other side, Pakistani officials argue that tangible progress in the peace process would help them gain control of the Islamic militants.

They are frustrated by New Delhi’s unwillingness to start talking about a pullback from the Siachen Glacier – an icy expanse in Kashmir that doubles as the world’s highest battlefield at 22,000 feet.

“If much progress will not be achieved then the pro-peace forces on both sides will be demoralised and those not in favour of peace will be strengthened,” Pakistan’s foreign minister Khursheed Kasuri said in an interview published yesterday in Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper.