INDIA’S PRIME minister Manmohan Singh yesterday met president of Pakistan Asif Ali Zardari for the first time since last November’s Mumbai terrorist attack and bluntly asked him to ensure militants were not allowed to operate from Pakistan.
“I am happy to meet you but my mandate is to tell you that the territory of Pakistan must not be used for terrorism,” Mr Singh told Mr Zardari in their 40-minute meeting on the sidelines of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation summit in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, which both were attending as observers.
Mr Singh conveyed India’s “unhappiness” with Pakistan’s inaction over frequent acts of terrorism aimed at India, especially the strike on the financial capital, Mumbai, that killed 166 people and traumatised the country for nearly three days. Mr Singh singled out the recent release of Hafiz Saeed, founding head of the proscribed Lashkar-i-Taiba (LiT or Army of the Pure) Islamist militant group based near the Pakistani border city of Lahore to underscore Islamabad’s lack of seriousness in acting against anti-Indian terrorist organisations.
India holds Saeed and his cadres responsible for the Mumbai carnage and the sole surviving gunman involved in the Mumbai attack, presently on trial in the port city is reportedly an LiT operative.
Mr Singh’s tough talk suggests no imminent resumption of peace talks is likely between the nuclear rivals who have fought three wars and an 11-week border skirmish since independence from colonial rule 62 years ago.
India discontinued several rounds of peace talks with Islamabad on long-standing territorial and security issues after the Mumbai attack.
While Pakistan initially denied any involvement in the strike, it admitted later that it had been partially planned from its territory and under Indian and US pressure started to take cursory action against the organisers.
The US, which is working closely with Islamabad in the global war against terror, is anxious to create a thaw in relations between the neighbours to ease tension in the region.
Washington believes this would enable a more effective deployment of the Pakistani army against al-Qaeda and its Taliban associates in neighbouring Afghanistan’s tribal regions without Pakistan having to militarily worry about hostile Indian designs.
However, the Singh-Zardari meeting was not entirely unproductive.
Pakistani foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said the two foreign secretaries – the senior most civil servants in their departments – would meet “soon” to exchange information on terrorism, but declined to set a deadline. Thereafter, the respective political leaders, Mr Qureshi added, would meet in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El Sheikh during the Non-Aligned Movement meeting in mid-July and take matters further.
Earlier, before meeting Mr Zardari, the Indian prime minister in his address to the summit meeting had urged regional co-operation against terrorism and other security threats.
“The spectre of terrorism, extremist ideologies and illicit drug trafficking haunts our region. Terrorist crimes committed today are transnational in nature,” Mr Singh declared.