By Siddharth Varadarajan
Oct 28, 2009
‘Sharm el-Shaken’ but not stirred, Prime Minister makes fresh pitch for peace with Pakistan.
LATEST PEACE OVERTURES: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on a public platform in Kashmir Valley with the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi.
In signalling his government’s readiness to discuss initiatives to strengthen people-to-people interaction across the Line of Control, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh may just have hit upon a magic formula that could potentially advance the peace process with Pakistan and make life easier for the beleaguered people of Jammu and Kashmir. Without diluting New Delhi’s key demand that Islamabad act to eliminate the threat that Pakistan-based terrorist groups pose to India.
Carefully structured speech
It has taken Dr. Singh three months to put the ghost of the Sharm el-Sheikh controversy behind him and he did so in a way that political India could best understand: his latest peace overture was made from a public platform in the Valley with the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, on the dais beside him.
Considerable care seems to have gone in to the structure of the Prime Minister’s speech. He first noted the advances that were made bilaterally on all issues, including on a permanent resolution of Kashmir, between 2004 and 2007. This was a time when militancy and violence began to decline. Trade with Pakistan went up three times but, more importantly for Kashmir, trade between the two sides of the divided state began. Since then, however, terrorist activities increased, eventually bringing a halt to this process of constructive engagement.
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