By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI, Jun 6 2003 (IPS)

South Asia’s arch rivals India and Pakistan continue to move slowly but steadily toward dialogue, say analysts who point to recent trends that reflect an effort to not let the usual irritants undercut the new, if cautious, warmth in their ties. ”Peace can happen only when there is a opportune moment and we now have a window,” Prashant Dikshit, deputy director of the prestigious New Delhi-based Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS), said in an interview.

Dikshit, a retired air commodore, pointed to how during two weeks in late April and early May, India been able – without derailing the current peace initiative – to call in air power to destroy militant camps and kill more than 60 suspected militants at Surankote, located along the Line of Control (LoC) that runs through disputed Kashmir.

This peace initiative was announced by Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on Apr. 18, and Pakistan has since responded with a willingness to pursue it.

”There was no way out but to use air power and the Indian armed forces had good reason not to resort to it earlier,” commented Dikshit on the biggest military action since the 1999 undeclared war at Kargil on the Line of Control, which separates the Pakistani and Indian controlled parts of Kashmir.

Dikshit said there was evidence that infrastructure and camps set up by militant groups on the Pakistan side of the Line of Control were now being dismantled because Pakistan, under intense pressure from Washington, had no option but to change its policy of being supportive of the separatist militancy in Indian-controlled Kashmir.

In an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp (BBC) broadcast Sunday, Pakistan’s foreign minister, Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri, said that his government was serious about stopping militants crossing into Indian territory – an issue that has been a major stumbling block to dialogue.

”We have never said there should be cross-border terrorism. What we have been saying is that our government is trying its level best to stop it,” Kasuri said, in what Indian newspapers have described as the first open admission by a high Pakistani official of the existence of cross-border militancy in Kashmir.

Another sign of the thaw in relations is India’s announcement of the resumption in July of the bus service between New Delhi and the Pakistani city of Lahore, which had been inaugurated by Vajpayee in February 1999.

But Vajpayee, who made another attempt at peace by inviting Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf for a summit in the north Indian city of Agra in July 2001, appears to be playing it slow this time.

Returning from a week-long tour of Germany, France and Russia on Wednesday, Vajpayee told reporters at the airport that another Indo-Pakistan summit would be possible ”only after cross-border terrorism ends”.

Vajpayee also said that any talks on Kashmir would have to ”start with that part of Kashmir which is under Pakistani occupation”.

But provocative as Vajpayee’s statements were, Islamabad has chosen to downplay them. ”I don’t think there is any need to react (to Vajpayee),” Pakistan’s Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed was shown by Indian television channels as saying.

”As far as Pakistan is concerned we are waiting for (Vajpayee’s) response and the timing for the dialogue. We believe and want that we should start with a good atmosphere and a positive approach,” Ahmed said.

The current window of opportunity for peace was thrown even wider following the May visit of U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to Islamabad and New Delhi. He was reported to have taken up cross-border militancy as a priority issue.

Soon after Armitage’s visit, Islamabad ordered the arrest of several top leaders of the Hizbul Mujahideen militant group and ordered ‘restrictions’ on it, whose aim is to secure the accession of the Indian part of Kashmir to Pakistan.

Indian officials, however, feel that Pakistan could do more. Kashmir’s police chief K Rajendra, for instance, reacted to the arrests by saying that it would have been better if Hizbul Mujahideen leader Syed Salahuddin was arrested and handed over to face trial in India.

Another positive development, from the Indian point of view, is the sudden exit of Syed Ali Shah Geelani, leader of the pro-Pakistan Jamaat-e-Islami party, from the All-Party Hurriyat Committee (APHC), an influential conglomeration of legitimate political parties in Srinagar, summer capital of Indian Kashmir. Indian officials hope this will be a blow to separatist efforts there.

In the wake of the latest attempt at peace, India and Pakistan have both said all outstanding issues, including Kashmir, could be settled through dialogue are now set to restore diplomatic ties to levels existing before December 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament.

New Delhi blamed that attack on militants linked to Pakistan, although Islamabad denied it. An outraged New Delhi then downgraded ties between the two countries to the level of deputy high commissioner, suspended all overflights and rail and road links and severed sport and cultural ties.

India deployed some 700,000 of its troops along the Indo-Pakistan border. The two nuclear-armed countries had to be pulled back from the brink of war in mid-2002 through intense international diplomacy led by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and his deputy Armitage.

Immediately before Vajpayee’s surprise offer of ”the hand of friendship” to Pakistan while speaking at a public rally in Srinagar in April, India’s Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha had described the neighbouring country as the ”most irresponsible” in the world and rife for ”pre-emptive action” like Iraq.

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