A cleverer move could not have been devised. I remember these leaders blushing with embarrassment when we captured them repeatedly on camera being chaperoned by Pakistani officials. The difficulty with Islamabad is that it wishes the world community to notice its peace overtures, made from the rooftops, but not see the road blocks it sets up to halt progress. There was, in this approach, a slight opening for the Clinton administration. All the assumptions may now have to be kept in abeyance until the new administration in Washington mellows for a year.
Korean peninsula have all to be given a once-over before the gaze settles on South Asia.
The Indian media, meanwhile, must keep a steady, balanced eye on the Taliban-Islamabad nexus so that the world knows of our dangerous neighborhood. Islamabad's mantra of trilateralism has no takers in New Delhi. But Islamabad has lost further credit by its unfortunate response to the act of terrorism at the Red Fort. Damage had been done by the time amends were made by the Pakistan foreign office. Mohajir, Sindhi, Pakhtoon and Balluch leaders declared from the same platform that the two-nation theory was dead, Partition a blunder and that all that the smaller states of Pakistan would strive for would be to weaken the ISI, Army and the Punjabi elite's stranglehold on the state.