Taj hotel during Mumbai terror attack. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

The first official talks between long-term rivals Pakistan and India since the 2008 Mumbai attacks have been widely viewed by the two countries’ media as a stalemate, despite Washington’s efforts of downplaying their failure.

Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao met with her Pakistani counterpart Salman Bashir on Thursday at the Hyderabad House in New Delhi, in a bid to resume talks that had been suspended for nearly 14 months following the November 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks that claimed 166 lives. Promising though it was, the meeting between the nuclear-armed neighbours hit a deadlock, with the secretaries failing to resolve core issues, especially India’s concerns over Pakistan’s weakness in curbing Islamic militant groups and India’s refusal to resume a composite dialogue on the disputed region of Kashmir, reported Reuters.

Rao said she urged the Pakistani government to take accelerated measures against militant groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, which India blames for the Mumbai attacks, The Times reported. She added that she had handed over three intelligence files on the Mumbai attackers, other fugitives in Pakistan, and militant leader Ilyas Kashmiri, with close links to al Qaeda.

Although Indian and Pakistani media, almost unanimously, admitted having low expectations from Thursday’s talks, their disappointment at absolutely no headway was evident in their reports.

An editorial in Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper, while recognising that the talks reached no concrete resolutions indicating further dialogue, remained optimistic, saying that for a six-decade long dispute, “small beginnings should be embraced wholeheartedly.”

Echoing that the otherwise futile talks had paved the way for a new process of engagement, Siddharth Varadarajan, strategic affairs editor at India’s Hindu newspaper, said in a commentary, that the absence of a joint statement by the two foreign secretaries at the end of Thursday’s meeting indicated that “the bilateral gulf was still enormous.” He added that successful talks would have been possible if India were satisfied that their concerns on terrorism had been fully addressed, while for Pakistan it would have meant continuation of the complex dialogue.

Other press, however, was unwilling to focus on the bright side. The Hindustan Times dubbed the talks “new round, old story”, stating that the two countries “fell short of bridging the post-Mumbai divide” with Delhi pestering Islamabad to tackle terrorism more effectively and Islamabad insisting it would do so if the two sides restarted full dialogue.

Writing in Pakistan’s Daily Times newspaper, Sajjad Malik said, “The only ray of hope to emerge from the meeting was a general understanding to ‘remain in touch’ and the possibility that Nirupama Rao would accept an invitation to visit Pakistan ahead of a SAARC summit scheduled for April 20.”

While the press, both Indian and Pakistani, mostly adopted a neutral stance, outlining shortfalls by both countries, Indian daily, The Pioneer, showed no discretion in openly displaying its anti-Pakistan agenda. Writing, “Islamabad shows its claws at Foreign Secy’s talks”, the article exhibited an unwavering criticism of Pakistani participation in the meeting. Scrutinising almost every statement made by the Pakistani foreign secretary, the article underlined, without fail, the apparently uncooperative and demeaning Pakistani behaviour.

Despite the disappointing review of the talks, Washington continued its efforts to draw attention towards the significance of the meeting. Washington’s interest in the resumption of dialogue between the nuclear-armed nations is to encourage Pakistan to pull its troops from the Indian border and solely focus on fighting the Taliban, thereby assisting the US-NATO operation in Afghanistan. According to Dawn, State Department Spokesman Philip J. Crowley, told reporters on Thursday that a secretary-level meeting between the two nations was “a courageous step to open the door to dialogue again”.

As is evident from the latest attempts at a dialogue, there seems to be little hope of reconciliation for the two neighbours who have fought three wars since their partition in 1947, and have continually had turbulent relations marred with violence, hatred, a refusal to compromise and an unwavering trust deficit.