Pakistan's president visits India amid warming ties
By Harmeet Shah Singh
April 8, 2012 , (CNN)
New Delhi (CNN) -- President Asif Ali Zardari of
Pakistan visits India on Sunday -- the first by a Pakistani head of
state in seven years amid thawing relations between the two
nuclear-armed archrivals.
Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh of India will host a lunch in honor of Zardari in New Delhi before
the Pakistani leader travels to the shrine of a revered Sufi saint at
Ajmer in Rajasthan state, officials said.
Zardari's visit Sunday, a
private trip, comes in the wake of Pakistan's recent promise to grant
India "most favored nation" trading status.
The South Asian neighbors
have fought three wars, two of them over the Himalayan territory of
Kashmir, since the 1947 partition of the subcontinent into Islamic
Pakistan and Hindu-majority, secular India after independence from
Britain.
Last year, both nations
pledged not to let their fragile peace process unravel again over the
range of thorny issues that put them at odds.
After meeting her Indian
counterpart in New Delhi in July, the Pakistani foreign minister, Hina
Rabbani Khar, said she believed that "it is the desire and commitment of
both the governments to make it an uninterrupted and uninterruptable
process."
Their meeting came barely
two weeks after three deadly explosions ripped through Mumbai, killing
27 people. The attack revived painful memories of the 2008 terrorist
siege in Mumbai, for which India blamed Pakistani-based extremists.
Pakistan was quick to condemn the 2011 bombings of Mumbai while New
Delhi was careful not to point the finger at Islamabad.
In 2004, the nations
agreed to negotiations that cover eight issues, including Kashmir,
terrorism and Pakistan's concerns over river dams on the Indian side of
the border, which it sees as a threat to its water supplies.
Since then, successive governments have held talks in an effort to end the historical acrimony.
Singh and Zardari hailed
results from the dialogue in September 2008 as the countries completed
four rounds of diplomatic meetings.
But engagements were
suspended two months later in November 2008 after the terrorist assault
on Mumbai, which left more than 160 people dead.
Over the past two years,
India and Pakistan have held a series of high-level meetings in their
bid to put their peace dialogue back on track, a process considered
crucial to regional stability ahead of the withdrawal of U.S. troops
from Afghanistan.
In 2011, New Delhi and Islamabad agreed to resume talks.
"It's a win-win
situation when Pakistan and India are engaging in dialogue, are talking
to each other, and are building better cooperation," Mark Toner, a
deputy spokesperson for the U.S. State Department, said Thursday
regarding Zardari's upcoming India visit.
Prime Minister Yousuf
Raza Gilani of Pakistan, who met Singh on the margins of a nuclear
security summit in Seoul, South Korea, last month, also invited the
Indian leader to his country.
"Zardari has chosen a
visit to Ajmer as a reason to be in New Delhi," Sanjaya Baru, Singh's
former media adviser, wrote in a column for the Indian Express on
Friday.
Baru suggested Singh
"could choose a visit to his place of birth, the village Gah, as a good
reason to go to Lahore, and maybe even Islamabad."
Singh was born in Gah during British rule over the subcontinent. Today, the village is part of the Pakistani province of Punjab.
Gen. Pervez Musharraf
was the last Pakistani president to visit India, in 2005, upon
invitation by Singh to watch a cricket match between the two countries.
"Nothing need come out
of such visits. No joint statement, no agreements, no final solution.
But each such visit and the ensuing dialogue will make it easier for
both governments to walk down the road that Singh and Musharraf
defined," Baru wrote.
Other observers also said the Sunday lunch meeting between the Indian and Pakistani leaders was encouraging.
"The lunch being hosted
by the prime minister for a Pakistani president on a private visit is a
welcome step," said Uday Bhaskar, a strategic analyst. "These gestures
are in the long-term interest of India and that of the region."