*NEW DELHI:* India has invited Pakistan’s Commerce Minister, Pervaiz Malik,to participate in the informal WTO ministerial meeting taking place inDelhi on March 19-20, according to *The Indian Express.link>*
Malik is said to have confirmed his attendance. The invitation to Malikcomes in the wake of the late-December secret back-channel negotiationsbetween the two national security advisors, Ajit Doval and Nasser Janjua,and takes place after the global Financial Action Task Force (FATF)threatened to isolate Pakistan over the weekend if it didn’t stop usingterrorism as an instrument of state policy.
As the decision to participate in the SAARC summit, to be held in Pakistan,comes up again for consideration by the Centre — India and several otherSouth Asian nations had refused to go last year, ensuring a cancellation ofthe summit — Delhi is planning a more nuanced Pakistan policy than it hasbeen seen since the Pathankot attacks two years ago.
Diplomatic sources from India and Pakistan have confirmed that the twosides have decided to undertake an exchange of all their prisoners in theirrespective jails. They will soon begin this exercise by releasing the “mostvulnerable,” that is, women and children and mentally disturbed prisoners,some of whom languish behind bars after long outliving their originalsentence.
As many as 50 “vulnerable” prisoners are said to be living in pitifulconditions in Indian and Pakistani jails.
This most obvious of humane steps will now be carried out alongsidetargeted measures already being undertaken to control militancy inside IoKas well on the Line of Control and the international border.
However, under pressure by the international community to “reach out” tothe Pakistani government and its civil society, Delhi has withdrawn itsobjections to participating in multilateral meetings with Pakistan.
On Friday, Minister of State for External Affairs M J Akbar stood alongsideAfghan president Ashraf Ghani, Pakistani
Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Turkmenistan President KurbangulyBerdymukhamedov, at the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipelineinauguration ceremony and called it a “peace pipeline” that will deliverboth gas and peace to the troubled South Asian region.
But the decision not to contaminate every international meeting with theirpublic quarrels, both over Kashmir and terrorism, was taken by India andPakistan at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting in Kazakhstanlast June, thereby reassuring all other participants that the SCO would notbe hijacked by its newest members.
Delhi even hosted a four-member team from the Pakistani security andintelligence establishment — including its director-general in charge ofcounter-terrorism in the Pakistan foreign ministry — from January 31 toFebruary 2 in Delhi, along with similar delegations from other SCOparticipating nations.
The invitation to the Pakistani Commerce Minister should be seen in thatlight, diplomatic sources said. Sartaj Aziz, then foreign affairs advisor,was the last Pakistani leader to visit India in December 2016 for the Heartof Asia conference on Afghanistan in Amritsar.
Malik will, of course, meet his host, Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu, butit isn’t clear yet whether he will also be received by PrimeMinister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.
Clearly, as the NDA government enters the final year of its term in office,a re-evaluation of its Pakistan foreign policy seems to be on the cards.Delhi realises that it cannot bank only on the US to put pressure on therest of the world to make Pakistan fall in line — just as it did in theFATF plenary in Paris over the weekend — but must also take steps toassuage its friends and partners that it is also “seen to be doing”something.
But Delhi is fervently hoping the FATF crackdown will force Pakistan to acton its own longstanding demands to take action against Hafiz Saeed, themastermind of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, as well as its operational leaders,like Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi.
The government has made it clear that the Prime Minister’s participation inthe SAARC summit in Pakistan later this year will be dependent on theaction Islamabad takes against those accused in the Mumbai attacks.