Manmohan’s peace war get guarded Sonia backing

After keeping silent for nearly two weeks on the joint statement issued by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani at Sharm El-Sheikh, the Congress finally broke its silence on the issue last week. The party extended support to Dr. Manmohan Singh in what some people described as his peace war to mend relations with Pakistan. The Prime Minister in his intervention in the Lok Sabha during the debate on foreign policy issues on July 29, refuted Opposition criticism of "selling out" to Pakistan on the issue of delinking resumption of composite dialogue from Islamabad's action against terror outfits. He said that Pakistan for the first time had made an unprecedented admission of the involvement of its citizens in the Mumbai terror strikes and said that India wanted to keep open the avenues of peace talks provided Pakistan takes credible and sustained action to dismantle the terror infrastructure in that country.

The Congress came out in support of the Prime Minister, who had been facing criticism from the Opposition for giving a go by to an all-party consensus on foreign policy matters, when party president Sonia Gandhi said on Thursday, July 30, that the party's position on relations with Pakistan remained unchanged. In carefully chosen words, she said that the Prime Minister had made a firm and unequivocal statement in the Lok Sabha on major foreign policy issues, and there should be no doubt now on the party's position in the matter. Significantly, Sonia Gandhi did not refer to the Balochistan issue reference in the Indo-Pakistan joint statement.There has been disquiet in both the ruling and opposition camps that the reference could be exploited by Islamabad to point fingers at New Delhi's alleged involvement in terrorist activities in Pakistan's Balochistan province. In fact, government functionaries in Pakistan have already been crowing about the inclusion of the Balochistan reference in the joint statement. There have also been media reports in Pakistan alleging that a dossier containing details of alleged Indian involvement in terrorist incidents in Balochistan had been handed over to India at Sharm El-Sheikh. This has been categorically denied by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

It is clear that the Congress has decided to support Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in his initiative to improve relations with Pakistan. At the same time it is evident that the backing will be conditional on the UPA government not making any drastic or dramatic departure from the policy on Pakistan. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has already stepped back from the formulations in the joint statement, especially its interpretation by Islamabad, by asserting that there will be dialogue with Pakistan, but only after that country has demonstrated seriousness in dealing with terrorism. This line was echoed by Sonia Gandhi during her address to the Congress Parliamentary Party on July 30.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is right, of course, in his vision of mending relations with Pakistan. At the same time, the vision has to be grounded in reality. So far the experience with trusting Pakistan has not been good. There are innumerable examples of that, the most glaring and recent one being that of the Mumbai terror strikes. People have not forgotten Kargil also, which happened ten years back, when Pakistan surreptitiously moved its regular and irregular forces on to the heights overlooking Kargil, even while former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was taking a peace bus to Lahore and holding talks with his counterpart Nawaz Sharif.