NEW DELHI – Former chief of India’s top spy agency, A.S. Dulat has urgedhis government to invite Pakistan’s chief of Army Staff General Qamar JavedBajwa to re-start the process.
Talking to an Indian news channel, NDTV, together with former ISI chief Lt.Gen. Asad Durrani, the two spymasters from rival countries who co-authoreda book, the former head of Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) said thatradical changes were being witnessed in diplomatic and strategic fieldsaround the globe.
Both former heads appeared on the TV ahead of the release of their jointbook — The Spy Chronicles: RAW, ISI and the Illusion of Peace – a writingpiece having a plethora of sensational disclosures about the securitydiscourse of South-Asia and other issues of prominence.
Citing recent unexpected change in the attitude of the US towards NorthKorea, Dulat, who served RAW from 1999-2000, during said: “Who could havethought a few days ago that President Donald Trump would be talking to theNorth Korean leader? We should also think out of the box, as Dr ManmohanSingh used to say. Roll out the red carpet and invite Gen Bajwa, and seewhat happens.”
Emphasising on people-to-people contact, both dignitaries called for easingvisa process and resumption of cricket between two countries.
Gen Durrani, expressing his view on bilateral relations, said that formerprime ministers Manmohan Singh and Yousuf Raza Gilani’s meeting in Sharm elSheikh had produced a ground-breaking agreement, but it was tarnishedby bureaucracies of both countries. “The agreement to have a jointanti-terror mechanism would have been a great achievement for both. Alas,that was not to be.”
The book is set to be launched in Delhi this week, but Durrani will not beable to attend the ceremony as he has not been given a visa by New Delhi sofar, the Indian Express reported.
The book, which will be available in Pakistan soon, also sheds light on theso-called surgical strike of the Indian Army in Azad Kashmir, the arrest ofKalbhushan Jadev, Nawaz Sharif, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, Kashmir, MuzaffarBurhan Wani Shaheed and Akhand Bharat plan of India.
Besides narrating the spine-chilling incidents, Dulat has reminded theIndian leadership to address the Kashmir issue first of all. Despite dimhopes, the book has also indicated the possibility of resumption of talksbetween Pakistan and India in the wake of forthcoming elections in theMuslim-majority nation.
The book is hitting the shelves days after Pakistan and India renewed theTrack II diplomacy with an Indian delegation holding talks with a Pakistaniteam on April 28-30.
Although India claims that the recent efforts for detente did not signifyany watering down of New Delhi’s position that terror and talks can’t gotogether, a senior bureaucrat privately admitted that such a dialogue wouldsurely be at the behest of the government.
The Track II diplomacy is generally called Neemrana Dialogue, named afterthe fort in Rajasthan where it was first held in 1991, but it is brushedaside by New Delhi, with Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson RaveeshKumar saying that “…functional exchanges between the two sides havecontinued and is actually a part of normal process between the twocountries. So there is nothing new which we see in this dialogue”.