Pakistan’s doublespeak on peace dialogues with India was evident in the run-up to the scheduled meetings of the Foreign Secretaries of the two countries on the sidelines of the Thimhu, Bhutan meet of Foreign Secretaries of SAARC nations which took place on February 5, 2011. It was Pakistan that clamored for resumption of peace dialogues after the break last year. When India indicated that the modalities for resumption of talks could be discussed at Thimphu, Pakistan baulked. In a bid to derail talks, Pakistan in the preceding 48 hours of the meet went into overdrive with Pak Prime Minister calling on India to honor UN Resolutions on Kashmir, Pak Foreign Secretary accusing India of not being serious on Samjhauta blats investigations and the notorious Hafiz Saeed, mastermind of Mumbai 26/11 threatening a war on India to liberate Kashmir.

Pakistan had been clamoring periodically ever since middle of last year for peace dialogues with India, seemingly more to please its American masters. When India under similar United States nudging and our Prime Minister’s obsessive fixation for peace at any cost with Pakistan, indicated that resumption of peace dialogues and the modalities could be discussed at Thimphu by the Foreign Secretaries, Pakistan changed its tunes, as noted above.

India’s Prime Minister and his policy establishment refuse to recognize the strategic reality, repeatedly emphasized by me in all my writings on Pakistan, that Pakistan is not seriously interested in any achievement of peaceful and stable relations with India. The Pakistan Army has a vested interest in Pakistan-India relations being tense and volatile so that they can preach to Pakistani citizens about the bogey of the India threat to Pakistan’s existence.

The Pakistan Army even now with a civilian Government in power controls Pakistan’s foreign policy with India and it is they who call the shots. Obviously they cannot be a party to any movement towards peace and normalization of relations. Yet Pakistan has to make noises for resumption of peace dialogues so that their American masters who feed Pakistan and subsidize the Pakistan Army are kept pleased to keep the dollars flowing into Pakistan Army’s war-chests and those of its Generals.

What better way to do for the Pakistan Army than to make the Pakistani foreign policy minions and the Pakistan Prime Minister to keep clamoring for resumption of peace dialogues by India and then on the verge of India so agreeing, then use the same Pakistani dignitaries to queer the pitch and spoil the atmospherics of the impending talks by hysterical anti-India propaganda on Kashmir. This has been a repetitive pattern over the years.

The Pakistan Army in the pursuit of its overall strategy against India does not even hesitate to make use of the sinister Islamic Jihadi groups like the Lashkar-e Toiba and its vituperatively anti-Indian leader Hafiz Saeed to spit venom against India and issue dire war threats against India, so that an overhang of mutual suspicions dominate any meetings.

It is high time that India calls of this Pakistani charade and the Prime Minister musters strength and conviction to tell Washington that India will not enter into any peace dialogues with Pakistan until real democracy in its purist form emerges in Pakistan.

 This is an imperative to maintain India’s self-respect and ‘National Honor’ which cannot be allowed to be diminished and belittled by cheap Pakistani histrionics.