Realising that the expulsion of diplomats was doing more harm than good to their relationship, India and Pakistan will finally exchange visas for their deputy high commissioners tomorrow.India’s T.C.A. Raghavan and Pakistan’s Munawar Saeed Bhatty will be appointed to the number two job in their respective high commissions in Islamabad and New Delhi, highly placed officials here said.Passports for both diplomats have already been exchanged for the relevant visa. Raghavan will succeed Sudhir Vyas, expelled by Pakistan last week in retaliation for New Delhi’s expulsion of Jilani, on the charge of giving Rs 3.5 lakhs to a Hurriyat worker. Bhatty will succeed Jilani.The exchange of deputy high commissioners, however, doesn’t mean that both sides are now about to send their top diplomats back to staff their respective missions. That move rests on political considerations, which in New Delhi’s case either depends upon the end of Pakistan-sponsored cross-border terrorism or some economic movement on the part of Islamabad on the SAARC front.Raghavan’s move to Islamabad and Bhatty’s to New Delhi could restore some of the diplomatic equanimity lost by both sides over the two rounds of tit-for-tat expulsions of high commission staff over the last month.The strictly reciprocal move is long overdue. Raghavan’s visa has been languishing for the last eight months for clearance by Islamabad while Bhatty’s visa has been waiting in New Delhi since November.In the wake of Jilani’s expulsion, New Delhi offered that it would clear Bhatty’s visa if Pakistan gave Raghavan the green light. Both countries accepted that there was no point in increasing the bilateral tension.Bhatty is seen in New Delhi as being a ‘‘close aide’’ of Pakistan Foreign Secretary Riaz Khokhar and was his political counsellor when Khokhar was high commissioner to India in the mid-90s. Khokhar, a self-acknowledged hawk on India, left here on a bitter note after calling New Delhi uncomplimentary names in a parting newspaper interview.Meanwhile, Jilani’s expulsion has put a summary end to incipient moves in Islamabad to return some 250 Indian fishermen who have finished their jail sentences in Pakistan as well as that of 22 Sikh youth, now languishing in a Quetta jail.Pakistani papers had a fortnight ago reported that General Musharraf was considering both moves. The story of the Sikh youth is an especially dismal one, with them having been arrested in Turkey some months ago while trying to escape into Europe. Ankara pushed them into neighbouring Iran, which in turn pushed them into neighbouring Pakistan. They have rotted in a Quetta jail ever since, despite various requests by New Delhi for their release.Similarly, officials here say they have been asking for the release of the Indian fishermen for nearly eight months now. The fishermen had strayed into Pakistan’s territorial waters and fell a victim to the political feud between the two countries. Moreover, Pakistan has still not handed over the land to the Indian High Commission as it had promised about three weeks ago.
