NEW DELHI — Two weeks after a triple bomb attack in Mumbai, the Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers on Wednesday heralded a “new era” of friendlier and more stable relations between the nuclear-armed neighbors.
Both sides played down their differences in unexpectedly positive comments after talks in the Indian capital, but analysts warned that a huge gulf still exists under the surface, and the peace process could still be derailed by another major terrorist attack on Indian soil.
Pakistan’s first female and youngest-ever foreign minister, 34-year-old Hina Rabbani Khar, said the governments needed to acknowledge a “mindset change” among a new generation of Indian and Pakistanis, who have been demanding their governments engage more constructively than in the past.
The South Asian rivals have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947, two of them over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, with their front line often seen as one of the world’s most dangerous flashpoints.
The newly installed Khar, a businesswoman and politician, confounded concerns about her lack of experience by appearing to charm her Indian hosts.
Studiously avoiding even mentioning the word Kashmir at a joint media interaction after 2 1/2hours of talks with her 79-year-old and vastly experienced Indian counterpart S.M. Krishna, Khar said both sides wanted the dialogue to be “uninterrupted and uninterruptible.”
“This is indeed a new era of bilateral cooperation between the two countries,” Khar said, adding that although major challenges lie ahead, “I can confidently say that relations are on the right track.”
The peace process broke off in the wake of the 2008 attack on India’s financial capital Mumbai by Pakistani militants that killed 166 people. But under intense American pressure, both sides resumed formal talks in February.
Washington is anxious that India and Pakistan’s rivalry not upset regional stability, especially as it starts to withdraw troops from Afghanistan this year.
Indian officials kept their cool after another bomb attack on Mumbai on July 13 that killed 24 people, partly because they have failed to find a direct link to Pakistan to the attack.
“There is full awareness of the levels of difficulty involved in relationships as complex as those between India and Pakistan, but what is also important is for the fog to lift from this relationship,” said India Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao, adding that recent meetings had largely “cleared the undergrowth.”
Pakistan disputes India’s right to the Himalayan valley of Kashmir and has long backed militants fighting there. Khar ruffled feathers on Tuesday by meeting Kashmiri separatist leaders in New Delhi, and Rao said her government had it expressed its concerns about that meeting “in a frank and candid manner.”
“Having said that, let us not lose sight of the fact that we owe it to the peoples of the two countries to understand that there is a future to be built for this relationship, and there has to be co-existence between the two countries,” she said.
However, aside from a promise to promote cross-border trade in Kashmir, there were few concrete agreements of significance to announce Wednesday.
Indian analysts said Pakistan’s failure to bring to justice the planners of the 2008 attack on Mumbai remained a major stumbling block.
“You have a new sensitive foreign minister ... but things don’t change just like that in Pakistan,” said Indian retired Maj. Gen. Ashok Mehta, who has convened years of informal talks between opinion leaders from both countries. “The next time there is an attack on the scale of Mumbai [in 2008], you will again stop talking.”
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