By IANS,
New Delhi : Even as the government faces a crucial survival vote in parliament Tuesday, it will be business as usual on the diplomatic front as India and Pakistan launch the fifth round of their composite dialogue process here.
The foreign secretary-level talks are taking place Monday in the shadow of a suicide attack on the Indian mission in Kabul in which New Delhi strongly suspects the hand of Pakistan’s ISI.
Pakistan’s Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir, who comes here Sunday afternoon on a two-day visit, will hold talks with his Indian counterpart Shivshankar Menon on issues ranging from Jammu and Kashmir to peace and security.
The talks will focus on “building on convergence and narrowing down divergences” over the decades-old Kashmir issue that has led to three wars between the two countries.
India will raise its concerns about the suspected involvement of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in the July 7 attack on the Indian mission in Kabul, which killed four Indians, including a diplomat and a military attaché of brigadier rank.
The attack, coming as it did barely a month after Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi came here and spoke about fighting terrorism jointly, has created a discordant note in the midst of positive vibes emanating from the five-month-old civilian leadership in Pakistan.
Last week, a team from the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) cancelled its meeting with Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), set for July-end, to underscore its concerns at the alleged flow of terrorism from across the border.
The visit was cancelled days after National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan said that New Delhi had “pretty good evidence” of ISI’s suspected involvement in the car bomb attack on the Indian mission.
Islamabad has denied any role in the deadly blasts that also killed 54 Afghans in the first major attack on Indian assets abroad.
Without naming Pakistan, Menon later said in Kabul that the attack was the work of “our common enemies, of the enemies of our common friendship, and of the enemies of peace in Afghanistan and our region.”
Ahead of the foreign secretary-level talks, a joint working group met in Islamabad Thursday and held discussions on a slew of confidence-building measures aimed at boosting trade and transport across the Line of Control dividing Kashmir.
These included working out modalities for increasing the frequency of the Muzaffarabad-Srinagar and Rawalkot-Poonch bus services from a fortnightly basis to a weekly basis and the launch of intra-Kashmir trade and truck services.