A delegation of senior experts left for Thailand on Monday to attend the 11th round of the Chaophraya Dialogue, an India-Pakistan Track II initiative by the Australian India Institute and the Jinnah Institute (JI) to encourage informed dialogue on Indo-Pak relations. The process is now entering its fifth year.
The Chaophraya Dialogue had been aiming to give informed members of the strategic community in India and Pakistan an opportunity to interact with each other on a sustained basis. Past participants have included senior former officials (including ambassadors, foreign secretaries, intelligence chiefs and top-ranking members of both armed forces), academics, journalists and political leaders from India and Pakistan. Initiated before the Mumbai attacks of 26/11, the process played a critical role in bringing together senior interlocutors from the two countries when the official dialogue process was suspended. The dialogue had since encouraged participants to share the conclusions of each round with their respective governments.
There have been many efforts in the recent years to establish Indo-Pak peace through Track II dialogues that have contributed towards an increased level of understanding between the two countries. The Chaophraya Dialogue had been drawing from a growing international community of stakeholders committed to peace and had attempted to innovate its conference agendas by addressing the rapidly changing bilateral dynamic on the ground. The liberalised visa and trade regimes were a result of sustained efforts at the Track II level, but new avenues of cooperation and mutual learning needed to be explored to make these gains permanent.
The 11th round of the dialogue would be held in Bangkok from December 18-20 and would address crisis preventive measures and the issue of Afghanistan in a regional context. Both sides would be represented by senior experts who would deliberate on opportunities and challenges in the Indo-Pak relationship and devise a set of policy recommendations addressing them.
Participants from India included Prof Amitabh Mattoo, Nirupama Subramanian, Gopalaswami Parthasarathy, Dr Ajay Darshan Behera, Dr Happymon Jacob, Dr Mallika Joseph, Mr Baijayant Jay Panda, Mr MK Venu, Vivek Katju, Prof Ila Patnaik, Vice Adm (r) Vijay Shankar, Mr Raashid Alvi, and Mr Thiranjala Weerasinghe. Participants from Pakistan included Aziz Ahmad Khan, Lt Gen (r) Talat Masood, Dr Ijaz Nabi, Marvi Sirmed, Rustam Shah Mohmand, Saleem Safi, Mehreen Zahra-Malik, Dr Zafar Iqbal Cheema, Ayaz Wazir, Dr Aisha Ghaus Pasha, Hameedullah Jan Afridi, and Salman Zaidi.
