Krishna’s calls

Pakistan army chief’s telephone calls from China back home were intercepted and recorded by the Indians in 1999. New Delhi went as far as releasing the intercepted calls publicly without concern that this action constituted an act of war.

Islamabad and New Delhi were locked in a war on Kargil heights at the time. That’s how the Indians justified the intercept.

The situation is worse now. India is evidently engaged in low-intensity warfare against Pakistan. The Indians have been found involved in terror inside Pakistan under the guise of religious extremists.

In this situation, Pakistan should shed the weakness it has been showing for the past eight years and proactively show the world India’s malicious intent in talks with Pakistan.

And the best place to start is by releasing the taped conversations that India’s foreign minister and his aides had with unknown officials in New Delhi during the formal talks at the Pakistan Foreign Office on Thursday.

If released publicy, these conversations will show how India sent its foreign minister to Pakistan without any mandate to restore the peace process. The conversations will also show that New Delhi planned on misleading the international opinion. It claimed it sent its foreign minister to Islamabad as a peace gesture when it had decided to scuttle the talks by precluding Kashmir from the agenda.

The best evidence against the Indian government is the Indian attitude during the talks. It was almost as if the Indians came to dictate terms to a defeated party. Even our foreign minister, known to jump in excitement at the slightest contact especially with the Americans and Indians, was personally offended by Indian arrogance.

What Pakistani officials, both civil and military, need to understand is that this Indian arrogance is linked to the benefits that India continues to receive in Afghanistan from the United States and key figures in Kabul.

Pakistani officials are expected to share the findings on Mr. Krishna and his team with Mrs. Clinton today. But let’s remember that despite all the charm offensive and the courting, Washington continues to remain oblivious at best to core Pakistani security interests, which were harmed in the first place by American duplicity in Afghanistan.

Washington is only interested in a patch up between Pakistan and India so that Mr Zardari’s government could sell to the Pakistanis the idea of an Indian role in Afghanistan. US officials continue to try to convince Pakistan to grant India the right to use Pakistani transportation routes to Afghanistan. All signs indicate that Mr Zardari and his team are open to the idea but are unable yet to take the Pakistani public opinion on board.

What Pakistan does not need at this stage is the kind of diplomacy that Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and his government is practicing. It is preposterous that Mr Krishna got away with shameless posturing right inside the Foreign Office building — including saying Kashmir is part of India — while Mr Qureshi didn’t utter a word in correction. Even the Americans, whom Mr Qureshi is supposedly trying to please, fare better. A WashPost story over the weekend made it a point to use the term ‘Indian-held’ territory to underscore its disputed status.

India described the visit of its foreign minister to Pakistan as a ‘CBM’. It is time Pakistan politely turned down all CBMs. We have bent backwards for the Indians since the launch of Composite Dialogue in 2004. We know ordinary Pakistanis and Indians don’t want war and we don’t have to prove it through more CBMs. All probelms, including Lashkar-e-Taiba, are byproducts of the main conflict. Islamabad should deny India the benefit of delay tactics by indulging in CBMs.

It is time India is told to sit down and resolve the actual problems. That’s the real test of sincerity and intent that India continues to fail.

The writer works for Geo television. Email: aq@ahmedquraishi.com