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India-Pakistan NSA Talks in Bangkok

On 7 December 2015 the National Security Advisors of India and Pakistan, accompanied by their respective Foreign Secretaries, met in Bangkok. This meeting came after Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif met in Paris on 30 November 2015.

Sameer Patil, Fellow, National Security, Ethnic Conflict and Terrorism, Gateway House, comments on the significance of the NSA-level talks.

Statement:

“The India-Pakistan NSA talks in Bangkok are a change from India’s one-point anti-terrorism agenda with Pakistan. The meeting is important for three reasons – firstly, it established India’s direct engagement with the Pakistani Army. This is significant because it implies that the discussions and decisions of this meeting have the Pakistani Army’s stamp of approval and will hopefully, not be repudiated later.

Secondly, since the collapse of the NSA-level talks in August, both countries have learnt a key lesson – that such bilateral talks are likely to be more fruitful if they are held away from the attention of the media.

Thirdly, this meeting was held without Pakistan’s prior consultations with the Kashmiri separatists – the Hurriyat Conference. This is a significant success for Modi and Doval because they were able to prevent the Hurriyat from receiving any public attention.

The joint press statement released post the Bangkok meeting stated that the talks covered “peace and security, terrorism, Jammu and Kashmir, and other issues, including tranquillity along the LoC”. Pakistan will certainly use this to project India’s willingness to discuss issues other than terrorism, including J&K, as part of its effort to generate domestic support for the resumption of the dialogue.

While the talks in Bangkok may appear to be a breakthrough in India-Pakistan relations, it is necessary to be cautious about recent developments because the India-Pakistan bilateral has seen a number of false starts.”