TNN

New Delhi, Jun 29: India is facing a familiar dilemma with Pakistan. In Yekaterinburg, the Indian side was surprised when Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari laid bare his helplessness and his lack of control.

Faced with a barrage of security and terrorism demands and concerns by India, Zardari merely said it would be “helpful” if India opened talks with Pakistan without any commitment to act against the LeT or Jaish.

Army chief General Pervez Kayani is the real power centre in Pakistan but neither is he India’s interlocutor nor is he even remotely interested in addressing India’s demands, according to India’s security assessment.

So India is stuck. While there is a growing realisation in the government that talking is a better deal, it’s becoming more and more difficult to see how it can overcome the current impasse.

The two foreign secretaries are expected to meet in Sharm-al Sheikh to see how to restart official engagement — which will be difficult unless Pakistan takes some demonstrable steps on countering terror. But there is an interest in finding an opening, without walking into a potential disaster like the anti-terror mechanism.

Indian officials told the US last week that FBI should interrogate the Mumbai accused in Pakistan. Thus far, they have not been given access to the detained LeT leaders.

On the bigger canvas, India feels it is being dragged into a “hyphenated” situation again. So far, India has successfully kept the Pakistan issue from dominating the multilateral space. But this is becoming overtaken by the possibility of talks between the two countries, and India is in danger of falling prey to it. A senior official said regretfully, “We’re looking at a return of India-Pakistan hyphenation again.”

For instance, in Trieste last week, foreign minister S M Krishna met a large number of his counterparts, but the MEA only saw it fit to highlight the Pakistan meeting. This puts India in danger of having the Pakistan ghost rise at every occasion, making it a “one-issue” country, something Pakistan would absolutely love, specially because the G-8 focussed energies on Afghanistan, where India has huge stakes.

The NAM summit in July certainly will be all about another summit-level India-Pak meeting, overshadowing the main event, just as it put to the shade the recent BRIC and SCO meetings. That’s one more reason to begin bilateral talks, said officials, to keep Pakistan on the bilateral track.

US NSA Jim Jones, who visited Delhi for the first time last week, informed the government that he had set up a separate desk to go into “Indo-Pak” issues, headed by Donald Camp, formerly with the state department.