ISLAMABAD, 3 October 2005 — India’s External Affairs Minister K. Natwar Singh arrived here yesterday to review an ongoing peace process between the two countries and conclude an agreement to share information before carrying out ballistic missile tests, officials said.
Fresh impetus in ties were expected as Natwar arrived on a four-day visit during which the two countries will sign pacts on pre-notification of missile tests and setting up of phone link between maritime security agencies.
A slew of confidence-building measures (CBMs) were expected to be proposed by him in his talks with Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri. The two countries will revive after 16 years the Joint Commission which covers issues like visa, consular access to detainees and trade.
Natwar is scheduled to hold formal talks with his Pakistani counterpart on today. He is also likely to meet with President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz tomorrow, the official said.
Natwar said his second visit to Pakistan in eight months reflected the positive momentum in relations between the two countries.
“This frequency of high level visits itself is reflective of the positive momentum of the bilateral relations between India and Pakistan,” Natwar told reporters at Islamabad Airport.
“It is the overwhelming desire of the peoples in both our countries for friendly relations. Our governments respond to these sentiments and work toward a positive outcome of our deliberations,” he said.
The two sides were expected to promote economic ties and facilitating people-to-people contacts, Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammed Naeem Khan said. “An agreement on missile test notification will likely be signed during Natwar’s visit,” he said.
But analysts in both countries have said a breakthrough on the main issue of contention, their decades-long dispute over the Himalayan region of Kashmir, was not likely.
“We shouldn’t expect major breakthroughs but definitely we’ll see some progress,” said Jamshed Ayaz, president of the Institute of Regional Studies, an Islamabad-based think-tank.
“The whole exercise of the peace process and the so-called composite dialogue has, unfortunately, been centered on peripheral matters and gloating over settling them,” Pakistan’s the Nation newspaper said in an editorial.
“We must realize that the idea of composite dialogue has come a cropper and rethink our policy.”
Natwar’s visit follows a meeting between Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New York last month that ended without any major announcement or concrete initiatives, as many had expected.
Even before that meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, the neighbors exchanged barbs on their long-running dispute over Kashmir.
