Peace talk v/s Mohali match
NEW DELHI: Two days left for the World Cup semi-final held between India and Pakistan cricket teams, and here the Indian and Pakistani home secretaries began their first formal peace talks since the 2008 Mumbai attacks on Monday.
It’s the the decision of their leaders to meet during a World Cup cricket match between the two countries.
Total seventeen delegates from both the sides, including the two home secretaries and the top civil servants in charge of security issues, met in New Delhi to repair relations between nuclear rivals broken off the attacks, when Pakistani militants killed 166 people in Msumbai.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh invited Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani to the game on Wednesday and the talks are due to end on Tuesday, but the focus has already turned to Wednesday’s World Cup cricket semi-final between the two old rivals.
Home secretary Gopal Pillai told reporters at the end of the first day of talks.”Talks are extremely positive and in the right direction.” The two sides would issue a joint statement on Tuesday afternoon, he said.
GK Pillai will also raise the issue of fake Indian currency notes said to be printed at government mints in Pakistan. The government has put the value of fake Indian currency at Rs 16,000 crore and linked it to at least 15 cases of terrorist funding.
Progress in today’s talks was anyway expected to be small. They are about preparing the groundwork for a ministerial meeting in July that would put issues like Kashmir, terrorism and trade on the negotiating table in what is known as the “composite dialogue”.
During further talks the two delegations are also expected to thrash out issues of fishermen locked in each other’s jails. Meanwhile, Pakistan is expected to raise the issue of Samjhauta blast.
The two countries, which have fought three wars since their independence from British rule in 1947, agreed in February to resume formal peace talks.
President Asif Ali Zardari will also free an Indian national, Gopal Das, who has been languishing in a Pakistani prison for 27 years as an alleged spy.
World Cup semifinal has been heralded as “cricket diplomacy”, something of a tradition between the two countries that has at least helped ease tensions in the past.
As a strong preparation for the match, the anti-aircraft guns will be placed near the stadium.There will be a “no fly zone” around the stadium and commandos will patrol the city.It’s the security like a battle fort here.
(News Editor- Naushin Fatima Khan)
