India, Pakistan to restart wide-ranging talks

Reporting from New Delhi —  India and Pakistan said Thursday that they would resume talks suspended after the 2008 terrorist attack in the Indian city of Mumbai that saw nearly 170 people killed and hundreds injured by militants based in Pakistan.

The Mumbai assault continues to loom large. But the two sides decided to move ahead during a meeting of their foreign secretaries on the sidelines of a regional gathering in Bhutan this week.

Despite the two-year gap in formal talks, the format and the issues for the most part will be the same. Senior diplomats will discuss counter-terrorism, humanitarian issues, peace and security, the divided Kashmir region, water resources and the regional economy. The talks will be capped by a meeting, supposedly before July, of the two countries’ foreign ministers who will attempt to consolidate the gains.

After three wars and more than six decades of tension between the nuclear neighbors since independence from Britain in 1947, expectations are muted at best.

“It’s like a Bollywood movie,” said D. Suba Chandran, deputy director of New Delhi’s Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies. “Nothing will come out of it.”

But talking is better than not talking, former officials on both sides said, and enough time has passed since Mumbai to attempt some tentative steps forward.

“The stalemate has gone on for too long,” said Tanveer Ahmed Khan, a former Pakistani foreign secretary. “If we don’t talk, things only get worse.”

The two sides also have been under pressure from Washington to lower the temperature on a rivalry that complicates U.S.-led efforts to stabilize neighboring Afghanistan, where India and Pakistan vie for influence.

Analysts say that weak governments in both India and Pakistan make it difficult for officials to sell compromises to their respective electorates.

India’s ruling Congress Party has been battered by corruption scandals involving real estate, telecommunications and sporting events that have paralyzed Parliament. It also has come under sharp criticism over the rising cost of food, making Prime Minister Manmohan Singh look increasingly ineffective.

The ruling Pakistan People’s Party, meanwhile, has been criticized domestically for its handling of last summer’s devastating flooding disaster, growing extremism and for allowing attacks by unmanned U.S. aircraft against militants based in Pakistani territory.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani dismissed his Cabinet in a bid to reverse the political slide.

“Both governments couldn’t do anything when they were strong,” Chandran said. “What can we expect of them now?”

Some analysts expressed optimism, however, that support for peace talks on both sides has grown in recent years, which could partially make up for the leadership vacuum. They note that the Congress Party in particular may view the talks as a way to divert attention from its myriad scandals.

Although security and terrorism are a primary concern, discussions are expected to focus initially on less controversial and more easily solved problems to build confidence.

One such issue might be demarcation of the disputed Sir Creek between India’s Gujarat state and Pakistan’s Sindh province.

Another involves a long-stalled proposal to remove troops on both sides of the Siachen Glacier along the nations’ de facto northern border. Until the 1980s, neither country stationed troops in this brutal environment, with peaks that ascend to 21,000 feet, until tit-for-tat deployment left both sides unwilling to back down. Stationing there costs each side an estimated $350,000 a day.

A third, relatively easy issue would be maritime talks. The international sea boundaries are in dispute and fishermen of both countries regularly are apprehended by the other side. .

If progress is made on some of these issues, the thinking goes, then tougher disputes such as Kashmir — the cause of two of the neighbors’ three wars — might have a better chance of resolution.

Still, everyone recognizes that overcoming such a deep trust deficit is unlikely anytime soon.

“Right now there are too many imponderables,” said Shashank, a former Indian foreign secretary who uses one name. “Ultimately, we’ll just have to see how it goes.”

mark.magnier@latimes.com

Times staff writer Alex Rodriguez in Islamabad, Pakistan, and Anshul Rana in The Times’ New Delhi bureau contributed to this report.