THERE is nothing to mourn, just as there is hardly anything to rejoice about the outcome of Sunday's meeting in Thimphu between the Pakistani and Indian foreign secretaries, the Dawn newspaper in Pakistan says in an editorial. Excerpts: Salman Bashir did not refer to Kashmir and Nirupama Rao refrained from raising the terrorism issue. As for the pledge to continue talking, this has been a cliché. Neither side seems to have made a determined attempt in the aftermath of Mumbai to break the ice. The laconic joint statement itself doesn't speak of any resolve on the part of the two countries to proceed with talks. Instead, it is the foreign secretaries who gave hope, without telling us when and where the two officials, much less their foreign ministers, will meet. The statement merely explains why the two foreign secretaries met — “in pursuance of the mandate” given by Prime Ministers Yousuf Raza Gilani of Pakistan and Manmohan Singh of India at their last meeting in the Bhutanese capital in April 2010. Bashir said Pakistan looked forward to a “purposeful engagement with India”, while Rao declared that a dialogue between Islamabad and New Delhi was “a must” if the two were to resolve “the outstanding issues”. A reference in the press release to the mandate by the two prime ministers made sense, because the two executive chiefs had decided to break the deadlock. However, the reference to the foreign ministers' meeting sounded odd, given the fate of their last meeting in Islamabad. It was a disaster from which the two foreign offices have not recovered. The Qureshi-Krishna meeting fell victim to the Pillai affair, with Qureshi complaining that the Indian side had come unprepared and was relying on phone calls from New Delhi for a brief. On Sunday, Bashir and Rao obviously failed to agree on the date and venue for their bosses to meet. An invitation from S.M. Krishna is there, and Qureshi responded to it in positive terms. But again, going by Sunday's outcome, they are unlikely to meet in the near future. In short, the deadlock persists. One wonders whether the fond hopes the two foreign secretaries have expressed will be translated into action — whether they themselves will meet again and if they will be able to remove the obstacles in the way of a purposeful restart of talks, even with a restricted agenda. The possibility of the two governments having the wisdom to resume the now-forgotten composite dialogue that began in Islamabad in February 2004 appears remote. __
