INDIA REACHED out to Pakistan yesterday after months of tension following last November’s Mumbai terror attacks.
India said it would meet its nuclear rival “more than half way”, provided Islamabad cracked down on militants.
“It is in our vital interest to make peace with Pakistan, but it takes two hands to clap,” prime minister Manmohan Singh told the newly convened parliament after the recent general elections in which his Congress Party secured an impressive win.
India had postponed peace talks with Pakistan after New Delhi blamed the Mumbai strike, in which 166 died, on the Pakistan-based Lashkar-i-Taiba (LiT or Army of the Pure).
It also accused Pakistani state agencies like the military Inter Services Intelligence Directorate of backing the militant group, a claim Islamabad has denied.
But Islamabad has acknowledged the Mumbai raid was launched and partly planned from Pakistan. Under pressure from the US and India Pakistan arrested Islamists believed to be behind the attacks but officials in Delhi dismissed this as “tokenism”.
“I expect the government of Pakistan to use every means at their disposal to bring to justice those who had committed these crimes in the past, including the attack on Mumbai,” Mr Singh said. India holds Pakistan responsible for a spate of terrorist attacks across the country.
“If the leaders of Pakistan have the courage, the determination and the statesmanship to take this road of peace, I wish to assure them that we will meet them more than half way,” Mr Singh added.
The nuclear rivals – who since independence 62 years ago have fought three wars and a border skirmish in 1999 – began tentative peace talks dubbed the composite dialogue in 2004, focusing on eight contentious issues.
These included: the dispute over Jammu and Kashmir province divided between the two but claimed by both, unresolved maritime boundaries, cross-border terrorism, narcotics smuggling, and nuclear and conventional military confidence building measures.