By Ankit Panda
Is India entering a new diplomatic era in terms of how it approaches Pakistan?
As The Diplomat reported earlier on The Pulse, bilateral talks at the foreign secretary level between India and Pakistan have been shelved following a rendezvous between the Pakistani high commissioner in India and the leaders of the Hurriyat Conference, a Kashmiri separatist group. The Indian government had delivered a message of “its either us or them” to the Pakistani side and the high commissioner’s actions have effectively erased any positive momentum in the fragile bilateral relationship that was put in place following Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s inauguration, when he invited Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to India. If the talks had taken place, they would have been the first foreign secretary level talks in two years. Analysts expressed optimism about the trajectory of India-Pakistan relations given the positive rapport exhibited between Modi and Sharif in May.
However, as is evident, much has changed since May. The most important factor, perhaps, is that in Pakistan, consensus about the terms and objectives of foreign secretary level talks do not exist. As a consequence, Nawaz Sharif has a weak hand when it comes to dealing with India. Sharif was skewered domestically for his May trip to India for not addressing the Kashmir issue directly. He likely knew that this would be the response within Pakistan when he chose to travel to Modi’s inauguration. Moreover, during his trip to India in May, Sharif steered clear of meeting with the separatists — something that New Delhi had conveyed to his government in advance. That Sharif’s high commissioner would do so now, ahead of scheduled foreign secretary level talks, and ahead of another meeting between the two leaders at the U.N. General Assembly later this year, was likely unexpected by the Indian side.
Read the full story at The Diplomat