ISLAMABAD, 14 March 2007 — Pakistani and Indian officials held talks yesterday and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said the peace process could “change the destiny of South Asia.”
The two-day talks between Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon and his Pakistani counterpart Riaz Mohammed Khan mark the fourth round since a January 2004 deal to resume negotiations after a tense military standoff.
A Pakistani Foreign Office official said the negotiations focusing on the six-decade dispute over Kashmir and on limiting nuclear and conventional arsenals on the subcontinent were held in a “cordial atmosphere.”
“The two sides will meet again today and a joint statement would be issued after the meeting,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
Menon, who was ambassador to Islamabad from 2003 to 2006, later met Aziz and told him talks had been “useful and moving in the right direction,” the premier’s office said in a statement.
He assured Aziz that India would share with Pakistan the results of its inquiry into the last month’s firebombing of a train between the two countries which killed 69 people, most of them Pakistanis returning home, it said. “The ongoing interaction between Pakistan and India can result in (the) resolution of outstanding disputes between the two countries and change the destiny of South Asia,” Aziz said.
The three-year-old peace process has reduced mutual suspicion through a series of “confidence-building measures” including transport links, but it has made little progress on core issues including Kashmir. It suffered a near-fatal blow in July 2006 when India accused Pakistan’s military spy agency and Pakistan-based militants of involvement in train blasts in the Indian commercial hub of Mumbai which killed 186 people.
Yet India and Pakistan pushed ahead with a meeting of their foreign ministers last month after the deadly bombing of the “Friendship Express.”
The countries are also expected to finalize agreements on the rapid return of inadvertent border crossers, the relaxation of visa rules and meetings between border officials, officials said.
Foreign office officials said Pakistan had made proposals concerning the nuclear and conventional military balance between the neighbors, who conducted tit-for-tat atomic weapon tests in May 1998 and still test-fire missiles. The two countries earlier this month held their first meeting of a panel set up to fight terrorism jointly and agreed to share information.
Kabul Says Pakistan Fencing Border
Pakistan has started fencing parts of its border with Afghanistan, the Afghan Defense Ministry said yesterday as the government raised objections saying the unmarked frontier was disputed. Pakistan officials denied they had done any fencing but said work was set to begin.
“The Islamic government of Afghanistan strongly opposes this,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
