PAKISTAN APPEARS LIKELY TO ACCEPT INDIA'S OFFER OF

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 ISLAMABAD 000316

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/09/2030
TAGS: PREL PGOV PTER IN PK
SUBJECT: PAKISTAN APPEARS LIKELY TO ACCEPT INDIA'S OFFER OF
FOREIGN SECRETARY TALKS, BUT WANTS TO RESUME COMPOSITE
DIALOGUE

REF: NEW DELHI 0161

Classified By: Gerald M. Feierstein, Reasons 1.4 (b) and (d)


1. (C) Summary: MFA Director General for South Asia Afrasiab
Mehdi Hashim told Deputy PolCouns on February 9 that Pakistan
has not yet accepted India's offer of a bilateral foreign
secretary-level meeting, but expected it would do so. Though
the Indians have said they are open to discussion of all
issues at the meeting, Afrasiab maintained that little
progress can be made in such a venue. Only the Composite
Dialogue has a structure for achieving results, he argued.
Afrasiab said there will be a meeting between Interior
Minister Malik and Home Minister Chidambaram on the margins
of the upcoming SAARC meeting in Islamabad. He claimed that,
regardless of what the Indians say publicly, they have
expressed appreciation in private for Pakistan's steps to
bring the Mumbai perpetrators to justice. He dismissed the
significance of recent ceasefire violations along Kashmir's
Line of Control and the Indo-Pak border in Punjab. End
Summary.


2. (C) MFA Director General for South Asia Afrasiab Mehdi
Hashim told Deputy PolCouns on February 9 that the Pakistani
government has not yet made a decision regarding whether to
accept India's offer of a bilateral, foreign secretary-level
meeting in New Delhi in the coming weeks. The sticking point
is that India has agreed only to a meeting, not to the
resumption of the Composite Dialogue. Afrasiab explained
that, in the end, Pakistan would likely agree to the foreign
secretaries' meeting, especially because its failure to do so
would concede the high ground to the Indians, allowing them
to claim to the international community that Pakistan, not
India, is the stumbling block to bilateral dialogue.


3. (C) Afrasiab pointed out that Pakistan and India have, in
fact, continued to meet at high levels since India suspended
the Composite Dialogue after the November 2008 Mumbai attack.
This includes a foreign secretary-level meeting in February
2009 at a South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation
(SAARC) gathering in Colombo; President Zardari's meeting
with Prime Minister Singh in June 2009 following the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Yekaterinburg;
foreign secretary and prime minister meetings in July 2009 at
the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Sharm El-Sheikh; and
foreign secretary and foreign minister meetings in September
2009 on the margins of UNGA in New York. Afrasiab thus
argued that India's offer of a foreign secretaries' meeting
in New Delhi does not, in fact, represent a major step
forward on India's part.


4. (C) Afrasiab acknowledged that the Indians have expressed
a willingness to discuss all issues, not just
counter-terrorism, at the foreign secretaries' meeting.
However, he claimed that little progress can be made at such
a meeting, "which would amount to a few hours of discussion
followed by a press conference." Rather, Afrasiab insisted
that only the Composite Dialogue provides a structure --
eight baskets of issues (peace and security, Jammu and
Kashmir, terrorism and drugs, people-to-people exchanges, the
Wullar Barrage, Sir Creek, Siachen Glacier) with negotiations
on each led individually by the relevant ministries and
agencies -- that can achieve results. He argued that
Pakistan is a "small" country and India a large one, and thus
the Indians should be magnanimous and cease holding
resumption of the Composite Dialogue "hostage" to the Mumbai
case.


5. (C) Afrasiab said that he did expect there will be a
meeting between Pakistani Interior Minister Malik and Indian
Home Minister Chidambaram on the margins of the upcoming
SAARC meeting in Islamabad. However, he explained that, at
Nepal's request, the SAARC meeting had been postponed yet
again, this time from February 24-27 to sometime in late
March.


6. (C) Deputy PolCouns asked Afrasiab about India's claims
that Pakistan has not taken sufficient action in response to
the Mumbai attack. Afrasiab said that regardless of what the

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Indians have said in public, they have appreciated expression
in private for Pakistan's steps to bring the Mumbai
perpetrators to justice. The Mumbai trial is proceeding,
even if it is moving at a slow pace "because the courts take
their own time." Deputy PolCouns asked whether Pakistan
could do more to dismantle the infrastructure of
Lashkar-e-Tayiba (LeT)/Jama'at-ud-Dawa (JuD). Afrasiab
responded that Pakistan is "breaking" under the weight of
terrorist attacks, and can only tackle so much of the
terrorism problem at one time.


7. (C) Deputy PolCouns noted that there have been reports in
recent weeks about an increase in ceasefire violations across
of the Line of Control (LOC) in Kashmir and along the
Indo-Pak border in Punjab. Afrasiab conceded that there have
been several incidents, but he did not attribute any
significance to them. He explained that there is an
established mechanism of communication between the two
countries' Directors General of Military Operations (DGMOs)
to review ceasefire violations.


8. (C) Comment: Consistent with our past interactions with
Afrasiab, he was in character in putting a negative spin on
India's offer. Our sense is that, while the Pakistanis are
disappointed that India has not offered to resume the
Composite Dialogue, many officials do recognize that this is
a step forward on India's part, since there is a difference
between what has occurred over the past year - i.e.,
high-level meetings on the margins of other events in third
countries -- and an offer of a meeting in New Delhi. Several
Pakistani politicians have, in fact, thanked us for the
Indian offer, believing that it came about as a result of
U.S. pressure, including from Secretary Gates during his
visit to New Delhi.


9. (C) Comment Continued: The Pakistanis have repeatedly
pressed us and our high-level visitors, including Secretary
Clinton and SRAP Ambassador Holbrooke, for U.S. intervention
in getting the Indians to resume the Composite Dialogue as
well as the more important backchannel -- which has
apparently met only once in recent months. We understand
that the Indians face domestic political constraints in
resuming discussions in these fora in the absence of further
action by Pakistan against LeT/JuD, but Pakistan has it own
political and practical constraints in dismantling the
LeT/JuD infrastructure. The prosecution -- and, hopefully,
conviction -- of the current Mumbai defendants is likely the
most the Pakistanis can realistically achieve. If the two
sides are able to overcome their differences and resume the
Composite Dialogue and backchannel, there may be prospects
for real progress. The Pakistanis have stressed that they
want to resume the backchannel from the point where
Musharraf-era talks broke off in 2007 -- which is consistent
with the Indian view as relayed to Ambassador Holbrooke by
Prime Minister Singh during their January 18 meeting in New
Delhi (reftel).
PATTERSON