India hopes that Pakistan’s new prime minister will herald a diplomaticthaw between the two nuclear-armed foes after years of tensions, analystssay.
Viewed as pragmatic and business-friendly, Shehbaz Sharif faces dauntingchallenges as leader — among them relations with a neighbour his countryhas fought three wars against in the past 75 years.
But he hails from a political family seen in India as conciliatory towardsNew Delhi and willing to settle disputes with dialogue instead ofdenunciation — unlike his immediate predecessor.
“He is not someone who will go to the extreme of antagonising India,” AjayDarshan Behera, a professor of international studies at New Delhi’s JamiaMilia Islamia university, told *AFP*.
Shehbaz visited India link in 2013 as chiefminister for Punjab — a state that was split between Pakistan and India inthe bloody 1947 partition of the subcontinent.
He visited his family’s ancestral village on the Indian side of thefrontier and met with then-prime minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi,along with other officials.
And for his part, his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi has attended aSharif family wedding link.
The Hindu nationalist leader made a surprise trip to Pakistan in 2015, ayear after taking office, when he was hosted by Shehbaz’s elder brotherNawaz, himself prime minister at the time.
The Sharif brothers have usually had “cordial relationships” with Indianleaders, said Imtiaz Gul of the Centre for Research and Security Studies inIslamabad.
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“This is a good entry point basically for India to resume dialogue,” headded.
Modi’s trip was followed by several rounds of trust-building talks aimed atrepairing relations that had sunk to a low ebb after the 2008 Mumbaiterrorist attacks, which India accused Pakistan of sponsoring.
But that came to an abrupt halt the following year with renewed conflict inIndian-occupied Kashmir, a territory hotly disputed by both countries.
A couple of years down the later, a series of tit-for-tat air raids werestaged over the region’s frontier in 2019, with brinkmanship and radiosilence between the two governments heightening fears of another all-outwar.
And in August 2019, during Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government, India’sunilateral move to strip the autonomy of the disputed Kashmir territory inclear defiance of United Nations resolutions pushed ties between the twocountries into an abyss.
Diplomatic relations were downgraded and direct trade was suspended afterIndia’s moves, seen as illegal by Pakistan.
Imran Khan was also critical of Modi and called for international action tostop what he, along with several criticslinkofthe Modi regime, said were early signs of a “genocide of Muslims” in thedisputed region. -APP/AFP
