ISLAMABAD, 6 March 2007 — India and Pakistan will hold today the first meeting of a panel aimed at boosting cooperation in the fight against terrorism, but analysts say deep mutual suspicions are likely to stymie progress.
Pakistani and Indian leaders agreed to set up the panel when they met on the sidelines of a conference in September, when they also agreed to resume their stuttering peace process, frozen after bombings in the Indian city of Mumbai in July.
The meeting of senior government officials comes 15 days after firebombs on an Indian train bound for Pakistan killed 68 people, both Indians and Pakistanis, in an attack both sides said was aimed at sabotaging peace efforts. Pakistan asked to take part in the investigation of the bombing but India declined. Pakistan expects to hear the results of India’s investigation at the one-day meeting in Islamabad, said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam.
“This is a mechanism which has been established to help the two countries prevent terrorism acts on either side,” Aslam told a briefing yesterday, referring to the panel.
“It’s a two-way mechanism and this can be used to share information to cooperate by mutual agreement. We are approaching it with a positive mindset and we’ll see where it goes.”
The arch-rivals have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947. Now nuclear-armed, they nearly went to war again in 2002 after an attack on India’s Parliament that India blamed on Pakistani-based militants.
But they agreed in early 2004 to launch a peace process that has brought an improvement in diplomatic, transport and sporting links, but has yet to see significant progress on their core dispute over the divided Kashmir region.
Despite the improvement in relations, India still sees Pakistan as sponsoring a nearly 20-year insurgency by militants in India’s part of Muslim-majority Kashmir.
That mistrust is likely to frustrate efforts to work together on security, an Indian analyst said. “There can be no effective operational cooperation between the principal sponsor of terrorism and the principal victim,” said Ajai Sahni of the New Delhi-based Institute for Conflict Management. “This is just to show the world that we (both sides) are being reasonable.”
Tariq Fatimi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States, said both sides would be sounding each other out while India must be convinced of Pakistan’s sincerity in tackling militancy.
“They suspect our motives, we suspect their motives. We want to know what exactly they want to achieve through this and the same goes for them,” he said.
India felt terrorism was a major issue while in Pakistan there was suspicion India was trying to divert attention from Kashmir, he said. “So there is an inherent difference in the approach of the two countries,” he said. Fatimi said India’s reluctance to let Pakistan in on the investigation of the Feb. 19 attack on the Samjhauta Express train was a missed opportunity. Nevertheless, some good could come out of it.
“Had India done that I think it would have created a very good precedent,” he said, referring to a joint investigation.
“The horrible tragedy of Samjhauta could contain within itself the seed for very meaningful and positive cooperation.”
But G. Parthasarathy, a former Indian high commissioner to Pakistan, said he expected nothing of substance from the talks. “At best, we will see the charade of claims of better understanding,” he said.
