By Neelam Deo
Pakistan’s history of denial complicates the prospects of peace between it and India.
The cancellation of the August 23-24 meeting of the national security advisors (NSAs) of India and Pakistan is one more indication of the inability of the two countries to talk constructively. This time, Pakistan canceled the talks, stating that the Modi government’s preconditions — not inviting the separatist Hurriyat and following the terrorism-only agenda as agreed to at Ufa — was unacceptable.
The NSA meeting would have been an attempt to resume the composite bilateral dialogue, but every time such a decision is made at the prime ministerial level, the process falls apart due to unrealistic expectations on both sides. This is compounded by Pakistan’s denial of its support of terrorist activities in India.
This pattern — of hope and then a block — was evident also in the efforts made by former prime ministers Atal Bihari Vajpayee after Kargil in 1999, and by Manmohan Singh after the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
But renewed expectations emerged in May 2014, when India’s newly-elected prime minister, Narendra Modi, managed a diplomatic coup by inviting the heads of governments of India’s South Asian neighbors to his swearing-in ceremony. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif attended, after which a meeting of their respective foreign secretaries was announced.
But India called off the August 2014 meeting of foreign secretaries after Pakistan invited the Hurriyat for talks ahead of the bilateral meet. Pakistan knows that the Modi government does not accept any legitimacy accruing to the Hurriyat, as it would call into question the democratically-elected government in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), of which the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is a coalition partner.
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