Jaishankar's upcoming Pakistan visit to focus on Saarc, bilateral ties must wait

Foreign secretary S Jaishankar will be undertaking an official visit to Pakistan early next month, more than six months after his predecessor Sujatha Singh was to initiate bilateral talks with Pakistan but the visit and the foreign secretary-level talks were unilaterally called off by India last August. But calm down folks and don’t raise your hopes yet for India-Pakistan bonhomie. Jaishankar’s Pakistan visit will be essentially a part of the “Saarc Yatra” and the issue of normalisation of relations between the two nuclear armed South Asian neighbours will be a mere subsidiary.[caption id=“attachment_2100089” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Foreign secretary S Jaishankar. Image courtesy PIB[/caption] Jaishankar’s visit will have nothing to do with the protracted government formation in Jammu and Kashmir. Why should the Narendra Modi government appear to be giving a bit of leeway to Pakistan and let Islamabad feel that Pakistan is even remotely an X factor in Indian domestic political process like formation of government in Jammu and Kashmir? Jaishankar’s main task during his trip to Islamabad won’t be initiating the stalled bilateral dialogue process. As far as the Modi government is concerned, it would be least concerned on this aspect. The Modi government has already raised the bar in its conversation with Pakistan by coming up with a new template: either you talk to us or the Kashmiri separatists. No assurances have come forth from Pakistan that this basic requirement from the Indian government’s point of view will be fulfilled. And yet none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced that Jaishankar will be visiting Pakistan soon. Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin gave a clear idea of Jaishankar’s mission in Islamabad at his press briefing on 13 February. His following statement is quite candid and self-explanatory. “A Saarc’s satellite, whose utilitization is available to all South Asian nations, partnership between South Asian university and one university each in various countries, medical visas for patients from Saarc along with their companions, vaccines for children in South Asia, Saarc business travelers card. I could list out several others. These are the agenda with which the foreign secretary will go to each of the Saarc countries. If your question is that in addition to this would he utilise the opportunity to discuss bilateral issues, obviously nobody misuses an opportunity which is available,” Akbaruddin said. Here is another relevant quote of Akbaruddin which leaves nothing in doubt. “This is a Saarc yatra in pursuance of prime minister’s initiatives at the Kathmandu summit last year. I listed out to you a series of areas that India is interested in pursuing and if you say that opportunities may arise for discussion of other elements other than what I’ve listed, sure, we have a bilateral agenda with all the Saarc countries. We will pursue that bilateral agenda too, given what is possible within the constraints of a short visit to each of these countries.” So what should one expect from Jaishankar’s upcoming visit to Pakistan? Well nothing much if one is hoping for some pyrotechnics in the Indo-Pak bilateral context. His talking points will largely be Saarc-centric though he will be ready to grab at any opportunity in improving bilateral relations should his Pakistani interlocutors were to throw up such hints. In other words, it will be a visit steeped in diplomatese wherein he pays a bilateral visit to a difficult neighbour with a multilateral agenda while keeping his eyes and ears open for grabbing a bilateral opportunity if it were to surface. Thus the onus will be on Pakistan how to treat this upcoming engagement at the level of senior most diplomatic officials. Or, to put it in other words, India will be under no pressure to make Jaishankar’s Pakistan visit a success because he would be embarking on his Pakistan trip with zero hopes bilaterally and only a multilateral agenda. Essentially it will have to be Pakistan’s call whether to make Jaishankar’s Islamabad visit a roaring success or a moderate success simply because it would be structured in such a fashion that it would have zero chances of failure. Pakistan can make this visit a roaring success if they are able to put across their good intentions of improving bilateral relations by agreeing to a common minimum programme template. That template has already been drawn by the Modi government: that Pakistan would talk to Indian government, not to Kashmiri separatists. Given the current state of affairs, the Pakistani establishment would be in no mood to concede this important brownie point to the Indians. From Pakistan’s perspective, Saarc or Saarc-related issues are hardly of any importance till political relations between Islamabad and New Delhi are first resolved. Given this kind of scenario, Jaishankar’s upcoming visit to Pakistan may well be just a photo-op and a talk shop; an event where the leaves are watered and the roots are ignored.