For the first time, the Indian government has admitted, that its policy of not engaging with Pakistan – post 26/11 – may have been wrong.
Outgoing Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao said on Sunday that New Delhi’s new approach was more realistic.
In an interview with CNN- IBN, an Indian TV, he said “I think you have to look at policy making in a dynamic way. I don’t think you are making a policy in a laboratory. You take into account the surrounding environment, you take into account a success approach or not. Did that approach yield too many dividence? Well you have to make assessment of that. I think the decision to re-engage with Pakistan and to talk about the issues that divide us, that created a gulf between us, that reduce the trust deficit as the two Prime Ministers said. I think it is a very realistic approach in dealing problems with Pakistan.”
“I think when they speak of the fact that non-state elements in this relationship need to be tackled, that we must look at safe havens and sanctuaries, that we must look at fake currency, we must look at all the aspects that are concerned with the business of terror, I think that is a concrete development,” she said.
Asked whether her Pakistani counterpart Salman Bashir accepted the revelations made by Mumbai attacks case accused David Headley in a Chicago trial court, Rao said the strategic link between the Pakistani state and militancy and terror needed to be broken.
India and Pakistan recently resumed their composite dialogue which was stalled by New Delhi following the Mumbai terror attacks in November 2008 when 10 militants carried out a mayhem on the country’s financial capital, in which over 170 people were killed.
