US pressure

As probe into the Mumbai carnage progressed it became increasingly clear that New Delhi was grossly mistaken in pointing the accusatory finger at the Pakistani authorities. Gradually the reality was taking hold that Pakistan is as much a victim of international terrorism, if not more, as India.
If India has not yet conceded this reality the world has. Quite expectedly, therefore, the Zardari-Singh meeting on the sidelines of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation summit in Russia last week has been dubbed as the thaw and widely welcomed. Pakistan and India are not two querulous tin pot entities in some corner of the world that their unending bickering can be ignored. They are nuclear-weapon states with large standing armies which makes their peaceful coexistence crucial to the global peace.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was quite in sync with this reality when she told US-India Business Council in Washington the other day that these two South Asian powers face a number of common challenges and "we welcome a dialogue between them".
No wonder, the Obama administration had recently dispatched two of its senior most diplomats to the region, sent in to 'fix up' the meeting between the Pakistani president and Indian prime minister in Russia. The Secretary of State herself would be here next month, almost coincidental to a meeting of foreign secretaries of Pakistan and India, for which date has not been set as yet. India is at pains denying that the forthcoming foreign secretaries meeting would be the resumption of the stalled Composite Dialogue. But if it is an issue of ego with New Delhi it is not so with Islamabad.
Nor with Washington which believes that what is important are the talks between Pakistan and India irrespective of the rubric under which these take place. This process is expected to culminate in a Pak-India summit at Sharm-el-Skaikh, Egypt, later in July when Prime Minister Gilani would meet his Indian counterpart. Gilani is as much part of the process now underway to defuse tensions in the region as President Zardari - although one would think that the Indian leader could resist the temptation of being impolite. He uttered the duly rehearsed words under full media glare that is unfortunate.
As against the erstwhile Bush presidency the Obama administration tends to look at this region quite differently, the main difference being to graduate from destruction to construction. Exhibiting a strong sense of history President Obama feels that the United States need to engage itself intensely and meaningfully with the regional powers to obtain an overall environment of constructive peace.
He is conscious of the fact that extremism spawning the Muslim world is as much the consequence of injustices perpetrated on the people of Islamic faith as any other cause - something that clearly comes out from his epic speech in Cairo and his refusal to take sides in the ongoing post-electoral Iranian imbroglio.
But what seems to be the immediate trigger for the stepped-up US moves to nudge India into a co-operative mode with Pakistan is Pakistan Army's decisive action against the Taliban. Secretary of State Clinton acknowledged this in her speech saying "as Pakistan now works to take on the challenge of terrorists in its own country I am confident that India as well as the United States will support those efforts".
Being the prime victim of terrorism Pakistan is not greatly upset at New Delhi's spin that the SCO sidelines meeting was terrorism-specific. "We are not averse to discussing terrorism; in fact we would like to discuss terrorism because we are affected by it," the Foreign Office spokesman said on Thursday. But, "having said that, we are looking forward to the resumption of bilateral dialogue that covers other aspects including Siachin, Sir Creek and other issues," he added. Of course, terrorism is a serious threat to the regional security and must be eliminated.
But it should not be forgotten that roots of terrorism go very deep as it grows out of the issues that remain unresolved. The American pressure that is said to be nudging India to coming to the negotiating table should not end with a battle victory over the Taliban; it should persist till genuine peace is obtained in South Asia by resolving all principal disputes for which the Composite Dialogue is the appropriate forum.