India Cancels Talks After Pakistani Envoy Meets With Separatists

New Delhi: India called off planned talks with Pakistan on Monday after Pakistan's top diplomat in New Delhi met with separatist leaders from Kashmir in defiance of an Indian warning, officials here said. (Read)

The announcement, which followed a series of cease-fire violations and tough language from both countries, dampened expectations that the two countries would resume a tentative peace process under the leadership of India's new prime minister, Narendra Modi.

Syed Akbaruddin, a spokesman for India's Ministry of External Affairs, said Pakistan's high commissioner in New Delhi had been specifically warned that the talks, scheduled for Aug. 25, would be jeopardized if he met with leaders of the separatist group Hurriyat Conference. He described India's message as "talk to the separatists or talk to us." (Before Calling Off Pakistan Talks, a Warning Issued Over the Phone)

The Pakistani official met with Hurriyat leaders Sunday.

"We were all ready to move into a constructive diplomatic engagement," Akbaruddin told NDTV, a television news station. "Alas, since then, what we see as efforts to undermine the dialogue have happened, and this was to interfere with India's internal affairs by calling in the so-called Hurriyat leaders."

Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded to the Indian decision cautiously and, using moderate language, described it in a statement as a blow to "efforts by our leadership to promote good neighborly relations." (India Cancelling Talks Over Kashmir Row a 'Setback': Pakistan)

Meetings between Pakistani diplomats and Kashmiri leaders before talks were a "longstanding practice," and Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's leader, had "clearly articulated the vision of peace for development," the statement said.

Sharif is currently preoccupied with a major domestic political situation that has left him little time for international diplomacy. Thousands of supporters of Imran Khan, the opposition leader and former cricketer, and Tahir-ul-Qadri, a cleric, have been camped out in the center of Islamabad since Friday, demanding Sharif's resignation.

On Monday evening, Khan threatened to lead a march into the capital's most secure area, in front of the Parliament and the prime minister's house, if Sharif did not accede to his demands. He said that his party's elected parliamentarians will resign from the National Assembly, although they will retain their seats in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Provincial Assembly, which Khan's Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf party controls. (Imran Khan Calls for Protests in Pakistan Government Zone on Tuesday)

Modi has made regional cooperation a major theme in his first months in office as India's leader and curtailed the inevitable discussion of whether to meet with Pakistan's leader by inviting Sharif to New Delhi for his swearing-in ceremony in May.

Regarded as a hard-liner on foreign policy, Modi could engage Pakistan without risking damaging criticism from the right, analysts on both sides said, comparing the overture with President Richard M. Nixon's 1972 visit to China.

C. Raja Mohan, a foreign-policy analyst in New Delhi, cautioned against reading too much into Monday's announcement, calling it "the usual bump in the road." He said the cancellation of the talks would mean little as long as Modi and Sharif have "back-channel communication."

Over the weekend, Indian newspapers reported that Pakistan's envoy, Abdul Basit, would hold a series of "consultations" with Hurriyat leaders this week.

The Hurriyat Conference is a coalition of separatist leaders in Indian-administered Kashmir. It consists of various factions, some hard-line and some more moderate. Mohan said that Pakistan's envoys had occasionally met with the Hurriyat leaders when Gen. Pervez Musharraf led Pakistan in the last decade, and that India's reaction varied with the circumstances.

"In the beginning, they were very upset, but then they were quite willing to overlook it," he said.

Many in India cheered the decision, but Siddharth Varadarajan, a journalist and senior fellow at Shiv Nadar University, said the Indian ultimatum would make further dialogue far more difficult. In a column for NDTV's website, he said that meetings with Hurriyat were "a routine part of Islamabad's playbook," and that India's government "has never in the past allowed this irritating and unhelpful event to come in the way of its diplomatic agenda." (Opinion: PM's Pakistan Outreach Ends in Predictable Whimper)

The decision, he added, "has inadvertently strengthened the hands of Pakistan's military and the political ecosystem it supports."

The decision was also met with strong criticism in Pakistan.

"This is shoddy diplomatic conduct to cancel talks just days before an important meeting," said Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States and high commissioner to the United Kingdom. "By taking this step, Modi has lived up to his reputation as a hard-liner and indicated that his initial outreach to Pakistan was little more than public-relationing aimed at the international community."

Lodhi called India's action a "denial of reality."

"The reason cited by Delhi indicates its continuing refusal both to acknowledge that Kashmir is an internationally recognized dispute and that it needs to be peacefully resolved," she said.

Observers took it as a positive signal that Sharif did not meet with Hurriyat leaders during his visit to New Delhi in May. But from the start, it was clear that the leaders of both India and Pakistan would face resistance to a warming in relations - Modi from his right-wing supporters, and Sharif from powerful figures in Pakistan's military.

Last week, on a visit to Indian-administered Kashmir, Modi used the toughest language to date to chide Pakistan, telling an audience of military officials that "the neighboring country has lost the strength to fight a conventional war, but continues to engage in the proxy war of terrorism." (Read more...)

Pakistan responded swiftly, releasing a statement that called Modi's remarks "most unfortunate, especially as the leadership of Pakistan wishes to establish good neighborly relations with India." (Read more...)