L K Advani arrived in Pakistan late tonight to news in a leading daily that he had curtailed his visit by two days and promptly had to field a proposal by protocol officers that he let his delegation return to India and himself stay back in this country. ‘‘Advani in Pakistan’’ is a visit being keenly anticipated here. There is a sense in this city enjoying a mid-summer spell of rainfall that the paces he walks in the coming week could dramatically alter the operational code of bilateral engagement. His schedule over the next two days will take him to key sites of Pakistani officialdom. On Tuesday morning, after calling on Prime Ministger Shaukat Aziz, he will drive to GHQ, Rawalpindi, to touch base with President Pervez Musharraf and hold talks with Foreign Minister Kasuri and the Chairman of the Senate. On departure eve, the BJP leader asserted that his Pakistan trip was aimed at strengthening the peace process that began and gathered pace during the last year of the Vajpayee government. He clarified that his discussions in Islamabad were not as a member of government and would be qualitatively different. ‘‘If I had been in government,’’ he said, ‘‘my discussions would have been of a different nature.’’ In a curious way, his three-city schedule in Pakistan is redolent with the possibility of both reconfiguring India-Pakistan relations and reorienting his political profile. In this intensively policed city, that reorientation has begun on arrival. One newspaper, for instance, carried a report this morning that he would not be visiting the Jinnah Mausoleum in Karachi. Yet, his engagement book has that rendezvous marked for the early hours of Sunday. Besides Islamabad and Karachi, Advani will be spending a day in Lahore, with a brief visit to the Katas Raj temples in the Salt Ranges. The last leg of the tour, the two days in Karachi, will be steeped in nostalgia. Before leaving Delhi, he had pulled out his photo albums and old tricks learnt in his student days in St Patrick’s High School in Karachi, the city of his birth. Some of those photographs were brought to India recently by Musharraf. Tomorrow morning, those Old School Ties will be revived once again. Another alumnus had set off speculation last week when Kasuri said the Pakistan government had some apprehensions when the NDA lost the May 2004 general elections. He went on to assert that the UPA government had kept the peace process on track. But the indication was that Pakistan would like to keep engaged with the BJP.
