The Sunday luncheon meeting between Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh and visiting Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari in New Delhi is a positive development on more than one count. The visit is significant in that it is first, at this level, in past seven years. It is also significant for being the first highest level meeting after the 2008 Mumbai attack that reversed the peace process and brought the two countries to the brink of a serious confrontation. Credit goes to both India and Pakistan leaders to have taken smaller steps during past few years for repairing the damage and inching the peace process forward.  President Zardari had expressed his desire to visit the shrine of Sufi Saint Khawja Moinuddin Chisti in Ajmeer and Prime Minister Singh ‘seized on it to host the luncheon meeting.’  It was statesmanly of Mr. Singh to have converted the private visit of Mr. Zardari into an opportunity for furthering the relations and building trust between the two countries. Though the meeting which both Islamabad and New Delhi hesitated to call as a summit for ‘intense negotiations and ringing declarations’ lasted only for fifteen to twenty minutes yet it sent a message that there is a desire on both the sides to address all the issues confronting the two countries. One of the major positive fallouts of the meeting was announcement about the visit of Prime Minster, Manmohan Singh to Pakistan in coming months on a mutually convenient date. He had been previously insisting that he would be visiting Islamabad only if substantive agreements were in hand. The change indicates that the trust deficit between the two countries has been filled to some extent after Pakistan agreed to provide MFN status to India. There have been indications major political parties in Pakistan are on same page so far as improving relations with India are concerned. To translate the opportunity into bringing in lasting peace in the region the two countries need for clearing the major stumbling block in their relations.

Lastupdate on : Mon, 9 Apr 2012 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Mon, 9 Apr 2012 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Tue, 10 Apr 2012 00:00:00 IST