It’s all jaw-jaw at Agra as sun shines amidst clouds

Huma Siddiqui

Agra, July 15: The rain Gods, which had been playing truant ever since Gen Musharraf arrived in New Delhi on Saturday, relented and finally let the sun reign supreme on Sunday morning signalling a good start for the historic talks between the two nations. Both the countries decided to put the past behind and move forward. And move forward they did. Both, Prime Minister Vajpayee and Gen Musharraf, seemed to have developed an instant chemistry and the one-on-one talks, which were supposed to last only half an hour, stretched on to almost two and a half hours .

The sombre atmosphere gave way to hope and expectations that Mr Vajpayee and Gen Musharraf wanted to give peace and development a chance despite the seemingly intractable problems for the betterment of the two nations.

Without diluting the hype on Jammu and Kashmir with Pakistan insisting that Kashmir was the core issue, the Prime Minister is said to have drawn attention to the need for stability prevailing on the LoC, a pre-requisite for Pakistan to stop cross border terrorism as a means of building confidence.

The expectation from the summit from the Indian side is: Cessation of cross border firing and at least a reduction in violence. For the Pakistanis, it’s a time-bound programme to resolve the Kashmir issue.
If the summit proves to be toothless, ie the joint working groups’ meeting show no change in position then it is a failure.