Randeep Ramesh in Islamabad Monday January 5, 2004 The Guardian
The leaders of India and Pakistan have made a brave attempt at detente by agreeing to their first face-to-face meeting today since their countries almost went to war two years ago.
India's prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, will meet President Pervez Musharraf during a South Asian regional summit meeting in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.
Last year's conference was cancelled when Mr Vajpayee refused to travel to Pakistan because of increasing tension.
Under tight security in Islamabad, after two recent attempts to assassinate Gen Musharraf, Mr Vajpayee and the Pakistani prime minister, Zafarullah Jamali, entered the opening session of the summit side by side yesterday.
"We have to change South Asia's image and standing in the world," Mr Vajpayee said. "We must make a transition from mistrust to trust, from discord to concord and from tension to peace."
Ten thousand police officers and commandos sealed off the area around the convention hall. Armoured cars took the leaders of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Nepal and Bhutan down roads lined with troops.
In a far cry from the bitter words that often characterised recent exchanges between India and Pakistan, Mr Jamali heaped praise on Mr Vajpayee, calling him "a visionary, a poet, a prolific writer and an able politician".
Although the issue of Kashmir was only fleetingly addressed, Indian and Pakistani ministers expressed satisfaction with the pace of progress after the half-hour discussion between Mr Jamali and Mr Vajpayee. In a further sign of the thaw in relations, the Indian cricket authorities announced the country's first test match tour of Pakistan for 14 years.
Relations relaxed at the end of November after Pakistan announced a ceasefire along the Line of Control, which has divided Kashmir between Indian and Pakistani since 1947.
Diplomatic relations have been restored, a popular bus service has resumed, and last week flights resumed too. Later this month train services will be revived. All were suspended after India accused Pakistan of training the terrorists who attacked its parliament in December 2001.
Before arriving in Islamabad, Mr Vajpayee told an Indian magazine he was willing to talk "openly" about Kashmir, but stressed that the issue would not be solved soon.
Mr Musharraf has also indicated that Pakistan will be ready to set aside its 50-year insistence on a UN-backed referendum on Kashmir and explore other solutions. Both are treading cautiously. They have not had any meaningful contact since a meeting in the Indian city of Agra in July 2001 ended in failure.
The warm atmosphere has meant that this meeting of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation will yield results, something that has eluded the seven members for nearly 20 years.
A free-trade deal is on offer which should enable them to sell and buy goods much more easily from 2006, generating much needed jobs. Because of punitive taxes on one another's imports, only 5% of the official trade of South Asian countries is within the region.
Meanwhile, Indian and Pakistan have made goodwill gestures, India offering its neighbours $100m to alleviate poverty, and Pakistan saying it will consider how it can pipe oil and gas from Central Asia to the rest of the region.
==================================== To this day, no one has come up with a set of rules for originality. There aren't any. [Les Paul]