While both Zia and Musharraf wangled invitations for Pak-India matches, it is for the first time that an Indian Prime Minister has taken the initiative to invite his Pakistani counterpart to the event. This inspires hopes that this visit would be more fruitful than the earlier ones. Other positive signals emanating from India include the sidelining of a pathetically anti-Pakistan M K Narayanan who was holding the key post of security adviser. The first structured meeting between the interior secretaries of the two countries has also been fruitful. While the period of more than two years has in no way lessened the gravity of the dastardly Mumbai terrorist attack, it is now possible for the Indian administration to look at the event with more objectivity. The way terrorists have struck in Peshawar, Lahore and Karachi and the way hundreds of Pakistan army personnel have died fighting terrorists could only have been missed in India by the most bigoted fringe. This thankfully is getting smaller in both countries with the passage of time.
Gilani has done well therefore to go to Mohali. A sudden change of heart can only happen in Elizabethan plays where it is accepted as a dramatic convention. It is understood that both sides will take time to resolve the problems, some of them hanging fire for the last sixty plus years. To inspire hope, there is a need to urgently make some of the announcements for which not much preparation is needed. Visa restrictions can be relaxed to give a fillip to the desire for peace which has all along been there among the populations of the two countries. There is also enough proximity of views on Siachen dispute for the two sides to announce an early agreement.
The security establishments in both countries should by now have realised that they have enough potential to harm each other which amounts in fact to self destruction. What they need to realise is that they also have enough capacity to work together for a much better future for the two nations. Let smaller issues be resolved first and more complicated ones taken up later when a modicum of trust has been restored between the two sides.
