General Sharif wants a proper talks roadmap, not
‘cosmetic handshake’
Pakistan continued to keep India guessing on the
proposed visit of its prime minister, Nawaz Sharif,
with reports suggesting a rift between him and the
army chief, General Raheel Sharif, over the
invitation to attend Narendra Modi’s swearing-in
ceremony.
Sharif is keen on making a new beginning with the
next government in Delhi. But sources said Friday
that though the foreign office has urged him not to
miss this opportunity of taking the relationship
forward, the allpowerful army has still not given the
go-ahead. “The army wants a clear roadmap for
talks and not a cosmetic handshake meeting with
Modi,” said a source requesting anonymity.
Sharif is still trying to find a way to make it to Delhi
for Monday’s ceremony but his job has been made
all the more difficult by statements from Lashkar-
e-Taiba founder and 26/11 mastermind Hafiz
Saeed. Video footage aired by local media shows
him saying, “If you (Sharif) visit India to attend
Modi’s swearing-in, what will you tell the
Kashmiris?”
Saeed, who has often warned against friendship
with India unless the Kashmir issue is resolved, is
widely believed to be speaking at the behest of the
army. After the BJP’s victory in the general
elections, he had remarked, “Modi has come. Now,
god willing, the illusion of friendship will be
shattered.”
Sharif is also facing pressure from another corner
— his cabinet colleagues. There is a division within
the Pakistan cabinet on whether he should accept
Modi’s invitation. While his adviser on foreign
affairs Sartaj Aziz has told him to go for it, others
like interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan have
advised caution.
Chaudhry Nisar is believed to have told Sharif that
with the tussle between the military high command
and the Jang media group at a critical juncture,
visiting India “would give all the wrong signals”.
Critics of the Jang group — which owns the banned
Geo TV, whose anchor Hamid Mir has openly
blamed the ISI for an attack on his life — accuse the
media house as well as the Sharif government of
being pro-India.
In Delhi, officials in the ministry of external affairs
said they were still waiting for a confirmation from
Pakistan, though some conceded the 48-hour delay
indicated all was not well.
“This is an opportunity for the Pakistan PM to tilt
the scales in his favour and tell the ar my who the
boss is,” said one official.
Ousted in a bloodless coup by Pervez Musharraf in
1999, Sharif is treading cautiously. His final decision
will, to a large extent, deter mine the immediate
future o f the India-Pakistan relationship.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistani Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif said Saturday that he will
attend Narendra Modi’s swearing-in as India’s
prime minister Monday, a historic first for the
two often hostile neighbors.
Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry said Sharif will lead
a delegation to New Delhi to attend the event at
India’s Rashtrapati Bhavan — the president’s
official residence — Monday evening, along with
leaders from other South Asian countries,
including Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Officials said it will be the first time a Pakistani
leader has attended such a celebratory gathering
in India. Sharif and Modi are also scheduled to
meet Tuesday morning.

After a decisive win by his Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP) in the recent Indian parliamentary
elections, Modi, a Hindu nationalist, surprised
observers in both countries when he invited
Sharif to attend his inauguration. Supporters
hope his move will improve relations between
the two countries, who have been bitter rivals
since Muslim-majority Pakistan was split off
from India when the latter won its
independence in 1947.
“We want peace for our next generations, and
that is why we want to engage India in
dialogue,” Pakistan’s information minister, Sen.
Pervaiz Rashid, told journalists in Lahore,
noting that the BJP will rule India for the next
five years and that Pakistan will “have to deal
with it.”
Nirmala Sitharaman, spokeswoman for Modi’s
party in India, said that party officials were
“happy” to hear of Sharif’s “goodwill gesture.”
Sharif, who began his third term as prime
minister last June after years of exile in Saudi
Arabia, has stressed in recent months his hopes
for better ties with India. In September, he met
briefly with outgoing Indian Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh in New York during the U.N.
General Assembly. Representatives for Sharif
and Singh also discussed ways to bolster trade.
“He is burning yet more political capital, and
that is why I think this is incredibly
courageous,” said Mosharraf Zaidi, an
Islamabad-based political analyst who served as
an adviser to Pakistan’s foreign secretary from
2011 to 2013. “He is a knee-deep in a series of
domestic crises, so going makes it a lot harder
for him to plow through opposition, but if he
does, it could be transformational for Pakistan
and the region.”
Experts and diplomats in India say the move
signals a more muscular and visible foreign
diplomacy from Modi, who has little formal
experience in that arena. He had served as chief
minister of the western state of Gujarat since
2001, and he has long been criticized for failing
to stop religious riots there in 2002 that left
more than 1,000 dead, many of them Muslims.
On the campaign trail, he largely avoided anti-
Muslim rhetoric, preferring to keep to his
message of economic opportunity . He has often
said he admires the legacy of India’s last prime
minister from the BJP, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who
reached out to Pakistan during his 1998-2004
tenure and is famous for having taken a bus
from Delhi to Lahore to foster good relations.
Vajpayee was met at the border by Nawaz
Sharif, who was also then Pakistan’s prime
minister.
But Modi has also said that the bloodshed
between the two countries must stop before
progress can be made.
“Do you think it is possible to have a discussion
amidst the deafening noise of bomb blasts and
gunshots?” he said in an interview this month
on the television station Times Now.
Although India and Pakistan have not fought a
major ground war since 1999, relations between
the two, particularly along their disputed
border in Kashmir, remain tense. Starting last
summer and continuing throughout the fall, the
two armies repeatedly lobbed rockets across the
border in what military leaders in both
countries called the worst border violence since
a 2003 cease-fire.
“I hope that this will mark a new beginning in
ties between our two countries,” Omar
Abdullah, the chief minister of the state of
Jammu and Kashmir, wrote Saturday on Twitter.
“The people of J&K will be watching closely.”
While most analysts say they do not doubt the
sincerity of Sharif’s hope for warmer ties, they
say he had to carefully consider the possible
political ramifications of such a visit. Just hours
after the Indian government said it had invited
Sharif, India’s consulate in Herat, Afghanistan,
was attacked by four gunmen who were
eventually killed by security forces. On Friday,
India’s Ministry of External Affairs cautioned
against concluding that the events were linked,
saying the investigation had just begun, but
opposition politicians in India took note.
Within hours of the announcement, opposition
to Sharif’s visit was building in Pakistan as well.
Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the leader of the anti-
India Jamaat-ud-Dawa and the man many
believe was the mastermind of the 2008
terrorist attacks in Mumbai, told reporters that
Modi’s decisive victory should serve as a
warning to Pakistanis that India is “not a
secular country.”
“The new Indian prime minister holds extremist
views, and we can’t ignore this fact,” Saeed said,
according to Geo TV. “Sharif must review his
decision to attend.”
Javed Ashraf Qazi, a former chief of Pakistan’s
Inter-Services Intelligence agency, also
questioned Sharif’s plans.
“Mr. Modi has so far been hostile to Pakistan.
Look at his election campaign and his speeches,”
Qazi said in an interview. “He has not come up
with any positive gesture. I don’t understand
why, then, our prime minister is in a rush to go
there. What good would it bring to Pakistan, to
its people?”

__________________
Then which of the favours of your Lord will ye deny?
Al Rahmaan