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The air between India and Pakistan is turning slightly warmer in the last two months of the year 2006 as senior officials from the two sides began to visit each other again, shaking hands and smiling.

Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee will visit Islamabad, capital of Pakistan, on Jan. 13 while his Pakistan counterpart Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri had already been in Delhi in late November.

Although Kasuri's visit was a private one, the two foreign ministers did meet each other for an informal lunch.

Both sides agreed that Pakistan-India relations are very important and that they need to develop a level of trust, Kasuri told the media after the lunch.

And during his visit to Pakistan, Mukherjee will invite Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Kasuri for the 14th South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit, scheduled to be held in India next year.

These shaking hands had not been seen for about four months since India's financial capital Mumbai suffered terrorist attacks in July.

Twist in bilateral ties

Being rivals and close neighbors for about sixty years, the relations between India and Pakistan never went in a straight forward way. There was no exception in 2006.

In the first half of the year no one expected huge breakthrough but the two countries seemed to move their peace process and bilateral talks in a stable manner.

Shivshankar Menon, then Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan, was quoted in April this year as saying that the third round of the Composite Dialogue talks may result in "tangible" progress on some key issues.

It was important that the dialogue should be sustainable in the long run, he said.

In 2005-06 fiscal year ending in March, the bilateral trade between India and Pakistan topped US$1 billion, up about US$400 million over the previous year, thanks to the South Asian Free Trade Area Agreement and opening of train and bus services across the border. The bilateral trade used to be US$161 million around five years ago.

Several efforts to ease the relations last year had remained till this year. The bus service resumed between Srinagar, summer capital of India-controlled Kashmir, and Muzafarabad, capital of the Pakistan-controlled side, after the deadly earthquake while a new bus route started between Amritsar of India and Nankana of Pakistan early this year.

And the two sides continued joint humanitarian relief to earthquake victims in the troubled Kashmir region opening five check points along the Line of Control.

But the wind suddenly changed its direction when the commute train system in Mumbai was hit by serial blasts on July 11, which killed about 180 people.

Pakistan remained an easy target after terrorist attacks in India. This time Indian police, intelligence agency and media posted serious charges against the neighboring country. Besides accusing the Pakistani government of not taking effective measures against the terrorist groups based there, they moved forward to say that Pakistani intelligence agencies were behind the terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

The Indian government suspended the composite dialogue and canceled several bilateral meetings while Pakistan reiterated the charges were baseless.

Wind blows back again

A joint anti-terror mechanism relieved the bilateral relations from the coldness though many people were skeptical about how it would work.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf showed their sincerity to push forward the peace process by promoting the idea when they met in the sideline of Non- Aligned Summit in Cuban capital Havana in September, two months after the Mumbai blasts.

And in mid November the foreign secretaries from the two sides met in Delhi. As a follow-up for the policy, the two countries agreed to set up a 3-member anti-terror mechanism, which will consider measures to fight against terrorism including regular and timely sharing of information.

At the meeting they also talked about Kashmir issue and agreed to fully implement measures to enhance interaction and cooperation across the "Line of Control" including an early start of truck service for trade.

The peace process seemed back to its track as another foreign secretary level meeting was scheduled in February next year in Islamabad for next round of composite dialogue.

Kashmir VS terrorism

No matter how the bilateral ties moved back and forth, it seemed that India and Pakistan just could not go around the controversial issues of Kashmir and terrorism across the Line of Control.

Musharraf's recent interview with India's NDTV made Indian public buzz again.

The TV news quoted him as saying that Pakistan will give up the UN resolutions and its long-standing demand for a plebiscite in the region of Kashmir if India accepts the four-point solution it has raised.

As a response to the report, Pakistan foreign office spokesperson Tasnim Aslam denied any change in the country's position on the issue but she said, "Essentially, what he ( Musharraf) said was that Pakistan was ready to show flexibility provided India did the same."

This was not the first time that Pakistan talked about the solution for the Kashmir issue. But as usual Indian government answered with little response.

Or it would respond this way.

According to Indo-Asian News Service, Indian Defense Minister A. K. Antony said, "This is not a new statement (by Musharraf). I have heard many such statements from him in the past so many years. Instead of statements, Pakistan should do some action, stop terrorism."

(Xinhua News Agency December 18, 2006)