Pak’s Tariq Aziz makes quiet trip to Amritsar, meets Dixit

But The Indian Express has learnt from official sources that Tariq Aziz, one of the key architects of the January 6 Islamabad statement and a trusted aide of President Pervez Musharraf, crossed over at Wagah on June 8. With him were Shiv Shankar Menon, New Delhi’s envoy to Islamabad, and two senior Pakistani officials.

During the NDA rule, Aziz had held several unpublicised meetings with National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra in the run-up to the Islamabad statement on the sidelines of the SAARC summit.

Such was the level of secrecy that Foreign ministry officials on both sides were kept out of the negotiations which began after Atal Behari Vajpayee extended the ‘‘hand of friendship’’ to Pakistan in Srinagar in April 2003.

In fact, a day after the NDA government was voted out, Tariq Aziz made a farewell call to Mishra.

Official sources said that Aziz met Dixit’s team at Hotel M K International on Court Road in Amritsar for a ‘‘couple of hours.’’ This is the first high-level meeting between the two sides after the Manmohan Singh government assumed charge. While the Prime Minister’s Office refuses to discuss the issue, the meeting of NSAs comes a week before the crucial expert-level talks on nuclear confidence building measures. Dixit, who heads the National Command Authority and briefs Manmohan Singh every morning, is India’s pointman on the strategic issue. Aziz is secretary of Pakistan’s National Security Council.

The Dixit-Aziz meeting is important for the dialogue process because the two NSAs, given their proximity to the heads of governments, also act as safety valves in case of confusion on any issue. With a series of India-Pak engagements ahead — from nuclear CBMs to foreign secretary level dialogue — the meeting was apparently to firm up back channel contacts and remove differences, if any, in perception.