Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari’s visit to India to pray at the Sufi shrine at Ajmer Sharif is quite significant, said analysts in Pakistan and India who hoped that it will lead to “concrete steps like easing of visas”, to say the very least. Zardari will visit the shrine of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti in Ajmer Sunday after meeting Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh over a working lunch at the latter’s official residence.
The visit provides an opportunity for talks between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Zardari, who last met on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Yekaterinburg in Russia in 2009.
The talks will be held between the two leaders without any aides or members of their delegation present, official sources said.
After the talks, no formal statements are likely to be made by both leaders and neither are any agreements likely to be announced. The action will be mostly behind the scenes to bridge the trust deficit on the so-called core issues, the sources said.
Zardari is expected to press Manmohan Singh to visit Pakistan, but the sources said it’s premature to accept the inivtation. In all likelihood, the talks could end in both leaders directing their foriegn ministers to move the peace process forward, specially in view of External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna’s visit to Islamabad in June-July.
This visit is important in the view that Pakistan has moved in the direction of granting India Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status. Last month, a judicial team from Pakistan had visited India to take forward the dragging trial of the 26/11 terror accused.
Amid improving ties, Hafiz Saeed, the suspected 26/11 mastermind and the Lashkar-e-Taiba chief, however, remains a festering irritant. India has been closely monitoring his anti-India jihad speeches and activities, and wants Pakistan to shun its denial mode and take credible action against the man who has made it his mission to poison the waters of bilateral ties.
The US announcement of a $10 million bounty on information leading to the conviction of Saeed has only bolstered India’s case. Against this backdrop, Manmohan Singh and Zardari are expected to discuss “all issues,” including Kashmir and terror, that bedevil the accident-prone India-Pakistan relationship.
Savita Pande, a professor of international relations at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, explained that this trip should be seen in the backdrop of Commerce Minister Anand Sharma’s visit to Pakistan.
Anand Sharma was the first ever Indian trade minister to lead a business delegation of more than 100 Indian companies when he went on a four-day trip to Pakistan in February this year.