India and Pakistan appear set to resume their stalled dialogue after a near-freeze of several months with Indian External Affairs Minister S M Krishna announcing on Monday that "a solid foundation" has been laid for a "sustained engagement".
Krishna, who arrived here for 33rd SAARC Council of Ministers conference which has been given a miss by his Pakistani counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi, was speaking in the context of last night's ice-breaking talks here between Nirupama Rao and Salman Bashir, Foreign Secretaries of the two countries.
The ground has appeared to be prepared for the visit of Qureshi to New Delhi expected to be in May, nearly a year after a disaster ending of Foreign Minister-level talks in Islamabad.
Both sides refrained from giving any tag to the dialogue whether it would be composite, as sought by Pakistan or comprehensive, as per India. It was obvious that the two sides had come prepared for a positive outcome for their meeting.
"The very fact that the two Foreign Secretaries met is certainly an indication that solid foundation has been laid for getting the two countries on the sustained engagement," Krishna said when asked whether progress was made at Sunday's meeting.
He said "the genesis of all this was the Prime Ministers, when they met in Thimphu, they mandated the Foreign Ministers and Foreign Secretaries to bridge the trust deficit between the two countries. So, all these meetings at the level of Foreign Secretaries and Foreign Ministers are going to achieve that purpose... building bridges of trust, mutual confidence, respect and all the other things."
Expressing satisfaction over her talks with Bashir, Rao said both the sides had adopted an open and "constructive attitude……We had a good meeting, useful meeting. We were able to discuss a number of issues of relevance with the (Indo-Pak) relationship."
She said her discussions with Bashir were not dominated by any one issue "but we talked about the (dialogue) process and charting the way forward, what the best modalities would be" in this direction.
Asked about the next step, she said: "We need to wait and see...We have to wait for this process to mature. We should be optimistic, cautiously optimistic because there are many issues that remain to be resolved," Rao said.
While pointing out that the nature of India-Pakistan relationship had been complex, Rao said, "we have to remain realistic. We should be aware of the realities."
Rao emphasized the need for a "vision" for the future of the relationship and noted that this was the feeling of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Bashir, she said, had told her that his government also was committed to taking forward the dialogue process on outstanding issues in a constructive way.
The Pakistan Foreign Secretary separately told reporters that "there was a broad meeting of minds" during his meeting with Rao and he had "every reason to be quite satisfied".
"We have had very productive exchange of views. We will be reporting respectively to our governments and then take it from there," he said.
On the Kashmir issue, Bashir said it was a "central issue" and hoped it is resolved "in accordance with aspirations of Kashmiri people. That is Pakistan's position and of course we look forward to discussing this along with other issues."