Within hours of Pakistan Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali’s response to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s peace initiative, New Delhi made it clear tonight that measures announced by Islamabad were ‘‘completely inadequate’’ and not in consonance with PM’s endeavour last week. Jamali’s announcement, official sources said, was more palatable to the eye than to the stomach. While including 78 items agreed upon in the South Asian Preferential Treaty Agreement (SAPTA), the Pakistan Prime Minister cloaked the fact that these items were part of SAPTA-III which pre-dates the 2001 Kathmandu Summit. Of the 200-odd items listed in SAPTA-IV during the Kathmandu Summit, Islamabad had put 146 items in the negative list. Pakistan has completely ignored this list while outlining its response to Vajpayee’s peace gestures, yet again raising doubts over its intent and approach towards normalising bilateral relations. According to official sources, Islamabad appears to be focussed solely on reverting to the status that existed before the December 13 attack on Parliament. Having spotted an opportunity in Vajpayee’s overtures, Islamabad has tried to ride the tide without paying any attention to India’s main concern: cross-border terrorism. In the process of extracting maximum at little expense, South Block officials said, Islamabad has conveniently skipped the fact that for India, the December 13 attack only underlined the scourge of terrorism. It becomes all the more important for Islamabad to address this issue if it wants to pave the way for improvement in bilateral ties. The approach of limited accommodation is also reflected in the announcement of resuming airlinks. In his announcement on restoring civil aviation links, sources said, Jamali made no mention of whether Indian aircraft will be allowed to overfly Pakistan. It must be noted here that New Delhi had granted overflight facility to Pakistani civil aircraft last year itself. Pakistan, however, never reciprocated to this gesture. The lack of clarity in Jamali’s statement on this issue, official sources said, gave out ‘‘not a very positive’’ signal and did not match the spirit with which Vajpayee had announced New Delhi’s peace measures. In Islamabad earlier, Jamali announced restoring air, train and bus links with India and sought ‘‘serious and substantive’’ dialogue on all issues, including Kashmir. Jamali favoured resumption of dialogue from where these were left at Agra. Calling for confidence building measures (CBMs) on nuclear issues, he said possession of nuclear weapons by the two countries have put a responsibility on them to ‘‘seek nuclear and strategic stability’’ in the region. ‘‘I believe all issues have to be addressed sincerely and constructively through sustained dialogue,’’ Jamali said, favouring that talks take place even at the summit level. Replying to questions on stages of proposed dialogue, he said talks would have to be at different stages and initial spadework and homework have to be done. It has to be a ‘‘tier-based’’ dialogue. To a question that India continued to insist on cross-border terrorism, he said, ‘‘there is no bar on talking. I can’t stop them from talking.’’ ‘‘India should put acrimony on the backburner and discuss all issues, including the core issue of Jammu and Kashmir,’’ he said, adding that national consensus was behind him to hold dialogue with India. The Pakistan Prime Minister assured Kashmiris that ‘‘at all stages, their interest would be of supreme importance.’’
