By IANS,
Islamabad : India and Pakistan should restore the confidence they had painstakingly built and which had been shattered by the 26/11 Mumbai mayhem, an editorial in a leading English daily said Thursday while another stated that what was “clearly lacking here is the will to fight”.
“The fact is that trust has been a major casualty of 26/11. The confidence the two countries had built in each other over the last four years has virtually evaporated,” Dawn said in an editorial headlined “Need to revive the dialogue”.
“The immediate need is to restore the confidence that earlier enabled Islamabad and New Delhi to engage with one another meaningfully,” it said, adding that the Indian government “understands this” and the Congress party’s manifesto clearly states that “dealing with terrorism aided and abetted from across our borders does not require a muscular foreign policy”.
“One hopes that when the electoral exercise in India is over, the two neighbours will choose to adopt a pragmatic stance,” the editorial maintained.
As for Pakistan’s efforts in tackling terrorism, Daily Times said: “What is clearly lacking here is the will to fight.”
Noting that those who bore the brunt of terrorism “are willing to fight back”, the editorial said this was proved by the security forces’ action that defeated Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud’s plan to take hostages and extract concessions with the March 30 attack on Lahore’s Manawan police academy.
At the same time, “will is divided at various levels in the country”, the editorial said, adding that commentators on TV and in newspapers still prefer to cling to the line that “It’s not our war”.
“Given this state of affairs, the readiness Pakistan needs to confront the challenge is being adversely affected,” the newspaper maintained.
Terrorism, Daily Times said, “will be blunted if those who are in charge of protecting the citizens are able to perform across the country in the way they performed at Manawan. The warlord of South Waziristan (Mehsud) will be less flamboyant in his statements if his terrorists are battled and captured on a regular basis”, the editorial added.