Recently a significant development took place on the foreign policy front. On March 28 the first-ever delegation from a ruling party made a four-day trip to India. The Pakistan Muslim League President Chaudary Shujaat Hussain led an eighty-four-member delegation consisting of parliamentarians, political workers and the press.

Chaudary Shujaat had first established contact with the Congress President Sonia Gandhi in 2003 to suggest that party-to-party contact was an important aspect of confidence building between the two countries. Sonia Gandhi supported Shujaat’s idea. Two years later, in the first-ever meeting between the two ruling parties, the PML pushed for a candid dialogue.

Frank exchange on the context, constraints, compulsions and the content of Pakistan-India relations did take place during the meetings with India’s president, prime minister, foreign minister, opposition leader and a wide-range of Indian intellectuals including media persons. The entire APHC leadership also held detailed meetings with the PML leadership to discuss Pakistan’s Kashmir policy, New Delhi’s Kashmir strategy and the challenges and opportunities facing the Kashmir struggle.

PML leadership took a national, not a party message to India. Pakistani thinking on bilateral relations was shared with the Indian government, politicians and intellectuals.

They argued that bold and unpopular decisions must be taken to break from the past patterns of hostility and unresolved disputes, that nuclear weapons have established a balance of terror so war is no option, that Srinagar bus service is a positive development for the Kashmiris but India must stop human rights violations and without resolving the question of the political future of the Kashmiris, lasting Pakistan-India peace was not possible.

Indians were assured that in Pakistan the consensus was that peace, not confrontation with India, was in Pakistan’s interest.

On Kashmir the primacy of the Kashmiris was stressed as much as the need to go beyond traditional positions. Repeating what former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif and now President Musharraf have been saying, the PML president said solution to the Kashmir dispute would have to be sought perhaps outside of the options presented in the UN resolutions. Throughout the trip and in his meetings with the Kashmiri leadership Shujaat argued that the correct approach to resolving the Kashmir dispute was one that was guided by the interest of the Kashmiris.

The PML’s overriding message was that having tried covert and overt wars Pakistan and India must sincerely give dialogue a chance.

Yet the fact that the issue of the Baghliar Dam could not be resolved within the bilateral context and had to be taken to the World Bank did not demonstrate Indian willingness to resolve even a relatively simple dispute within the bilateral context.

Of the three tracks of the current peace process, the delegation acknowledged progress on the CBM and normalization track. Repeatedly it was pointed out that on the third critical track, the dispute settlement, there was minimal progress. Shujaat observed that the public good will on both sides had generated a peace momentum, yet the political leadership was not demonstrating the boldness and sincerity required to capitalize on the space created for dispute resolution.

In the first comprehensive attempt to engage the Indians at the political level, PML’s visit established a new trend. It has opted for expanding the nonbureaucratic parameters of engagement with India.

Such trips can help increase the trust between the two countries and ensure that political engagement is marked by flexibility, transparency and frankness. To keep the communication going with India in all circumstances is a necessary task to avert any disastrous detours in the bilateral relationship. Political leadership alone can keep such channels of communication open. The Pakistani establishment too has seen the wisdom of such an approach.