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Cementing the peace process

The proximate reason for Pranab Mukherjee's visit to Islamabad might well have been the SAARC summit that India will host in the first week of April but the External Affairs Minister is bound to take quiet satisfaction from the collateral accomplishments on the bilateral front. Mr. Mukherjee's visit has underlined the fact that the peace process is firmly on track. Despite the disruption sought to be imposed by the authors of the July 2006 Mumbai serial train blasts, the fourth round of the composite dialogue process will begin in March. Dates have also been set for the first meeting of the joint anti-terror mechanism. As far as the "big ticket" items are concerned — especially Siachen and Sir Creek — there was no concrete progress but it would have been unrealistic to expect any breakthrough during this visit. To be sure, the commitment to expedite the process of finding a solution to these two disputes was duly reiterated by Mr. Mukherjee and his Pakistani counterpart. But it is clear that an agreement to disengage and withdraw from the Siachen glacier is not on the cards for the moment because of opposition from various stakeholders. This is unfortunate, because it is possible to craft a solution that will address Indian concerns about the region remaining demilitarised once the two armies pull back from the icy heights. One can only hope that as the atmospherics improve and the trust deficit between India and Pakistan narrows, the issue will be sensibly settled — as it should have been years ago.

For the moment, however, New Delhi's approach centres on the push to widen and deepen the people-to-people contact between the two countries. While this is sensible, the irony is that so little has been done by the Indian Government to clear the single biggest obstacle in the way of the greater flow of visitors: the absence of visa-issuing offices in Mumbai and Karachi. Nearly three years after a decision was made to reopen the two consulates, it remains on paper because Pakistan has been unable to find suitable office space in Mumbai for locating its consulate. This is an issue the Manmohan Singh Government needs to resolve speedily especially as Pakistan unfortunately insists that India's own consulate in Karachi cannot start functioning until then. It is also regrettable that the relatively simple issue of giving each other's diplomats wider latitude in moving around the whole capital region was allowed to fester and degenerate to the point that it finally required ministerial intervention. Visa liberalisation on both sides is surely a prerequisite for the wider and deeper people-to-people contact that India advocates.

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