New Delhi : Learning from the Modi government’s snub for interacting with the Kashmiri separatist leaders in August last year, Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit has called off a customary Iftar dinner arranged for them in the Pakistan High Commission in the national capital.
He obviously did not want to get blame for sabotaging the bilateral meeting of Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif in Russia on Friday, the first since after Sharif came to Delhi in May last year to attend swearing-in of the new government.
As soon as Basit got confirmation of the two PMs’ meeting, phone calls went to all invitees postponing the Iftar party. No fresh date was given, though the message was for postponement and not cancellation of the party. The invitees included Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Mohd Yasin Malik and Shabir Ahmad Shah.
Basit had learnt it hard way last August, when India called off the foreign secretary’s visit to Islamabad to protest against his adventure of inviting the separatist leaders in Delhi for consultations before the foreign secretary-level talks.
He had then tried to justify his interaction with the separatists, telling the media that it was to engage all stakeholders to find a viable, peaceful solution to the Kashmir problem and “this has been a long standing practice as we had been doing so for the past 20 years”.
The lesson he learnt was that the Modi government is different from all past governments that prompted him to put off the customary Iftar to the separatist leaders. He was then bluntly told that post-Simla agreement, there are only two stakeholders – India and Pakistan – and nobody else, and this was re-affirmed in the Lahore Declaration of 1999 between then PM Nawaz Sharif and Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
