India-Pakistan meeting had no surprises at all. Given the political exigencies at hand, the New York dialogue should have led to more meaningful results The much-awaited meeting between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counter part Nawaz Sharif took place in New York on Sunday, but not before getting typically beset by the kind of peripheral controversies that is the wont of India-Pakistan relations. Sharif’s alleged comparison of Singh’s complaints (of Pakistan’s behaviour to President Barack Obama) to the protestations of a village woman — a comment that was subsequently denied — generated enough heat and smoke to nearly obscure the matter at hand. It probably was a symptom of the lack of real depth to the meeting that reports say lasted more than an hour. Given the political exigencies at hand for India and Pakistan, the New York meeting ought to have led to stronger, more meaningful and definitely measurable results than the decision by the two prime ministers to let senior military officials of both countries settle the fractious cross-border issues and restore the ceasefire, and of course, invite each other to visit their respective countries. Such secondary-level meetings will simply be more in the series of engagements both countries have indulged in over many years. Riddled with political speak and short-term patch-ups, they have turned out to be more of a sop than a serious effort at the highest level to improve the bilateral climate. In that sense, the India-Pakistan meeting turned out to be full of no-surprises. This tame start, hopefully, is not a mood indicator of things to come, particularly given the leisurely interpretation of urgency both countries are guilty of.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Oct 2013 06:30:49 +0000
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