Careful handling need of the hour
Relations between Pakistan and India need handling with extreme care. It is after months of tension that the situation on the LoC is becoming stable. Any minor incident can be destabilising. With the first phase of Indian state elections over, the general elections are now on the agenda. There is a tough competition between the Congress and the nationalist BJP. It makes it all the more necessary to be cautious.
Keeping in view Mian Nawaz Sharif’s penchant for peace with India, the statement attributed to him on Wednesday seemed odd. According to a national daily, while addressing the AJK Coucil Prime Minister Sharif had said, “Kashmir is a flashpoint and can trigger a fourth war between the two nuclear powers at any time.”
In view of the sensitivity of the matter, it would have been appropriate for the daily to recheck with the prime minister’s secretariat before publishing the remark attributed to him. The reaction from the Indian side was predictable. The Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Sigh retorted that there is no scope of Pakistan winning any war against India in his lifetime. The remark however came in response to a question from an Indian journalist. Meanwhile, Sharif’s office has denied the comment and described the newspaper report as incorrect and based on mala fide intentions. One hopes that the mischief would end after the denial. There is however still a need on the part of the government to conduct a thorough probe into the embarrassing faux pas. What Sartaj Aziz said about the ongoing degradation of the Siachin glacier is a well-known fact and does not justify anti-Pakistan propaganda on the part of Pakistan-baiters in India.
At a time when Pak-India relations need careful mending the absence of Pakistan’s high commissioner in the Indian capital can create problems. It is the task of an envoy to clarify misunderstandings and expose false claims. The government in its wisdom had suddenly terminated the country’s ace diplomat and former Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir’s contract for serving in New Delhi in early October when he had hardly finished his first year in New Delhi. Equally incomprehensible is New Delhi’s delay of nearly two months in accepting the accreditation papers of the new envoy when it normally takes a maximum 27 days for processing the papers. New Delhi needs to accelerate the process to allow the Pakistani high commissioner to put in the much needed efforts to improve relations between the neigbours.
Few thousand soldiers are not going to create havoc on environment. Then, there are several thousands soldiers from China there. But having 4-5 wives and more than dozen children which an average pakistani seems to have, is definately going to create hovoc on enviroment. Need to think about it
I wonder if the commentator thinks Arab Sheiks live in Pakistan with many wives & concubines & whole litter of offsprings. I had known barely a few Pakistanis with 2 wives & 6 children, rest struggle to feed a small family. Unchecked population growth of Pakistan is definitely like a cancer which may kill Pakistan; but that is all because of the lack of planning, and brainless rulers of Pakistan. An average Pakistani has been trained not to think. I am a professional scientist who knows population grows exponentially, whereas the resources arithmetically.
Comments are closed.