Pakistan agrees to expedite 26/11 trial

Pakistan agrees to expedite 26/11 trial; PM Modi to visit Pak in 2016 for Saarc summit

UFA (Russia): India and Pakistan on Friday took a step forward in bilateral relations with both countries agreeing that they had a collective responsibility to ensure peace and promote development in the region.

In an hour-long meeting on the sidelines of SCO summit, PM Modi managed to extract a commitment from Nawaz Sharif to expedite the trial of Mumbai terror attack accused underway in Pakistan, while Pak PM sought to keep the focus on discussions over all outstanding issues, including J&K.

Pakistan also agreed to India’s demand on voice samples of some of the accused in the Mumbai terror attacks case.

Raising the Mumbai terror attacks issue during the talks, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told Nawaz Sharif to take action against 26/11 mastermind Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi for peaceful, and even friendly, relations between the two countries.

The bail to Lakhvi in April has become the biggest bone of contention between the two countries with India maintaining until now that no dialogue was going to be possible until he was brought to book.

As this paper had reported on Friday, Modi needed to initiate dialogue with Pakistan also in light of the fact that he may have to visit Islamabad in 2016 for the Saarc summit.

During the meeting, PM Modi confirmed that he was indeed going to visit Pakistan for the summit.

While the two countries are still far away from resumption of the composite dialogue process, they will make a small beginning with a meeting between the two NSAs in Delhi soon to discuss issues related to terrorism.

Another significant takeaway from the meeting was that the two countries agreed to an early meeting of DG BSF and chief of Pakistan Rangers which in turn would be followed by another meeting between the DGMOs.

The two countries will also release all fishermen in each other’s custody, along with their boats, in the next 15 days, foreign secretary S Jaishankar and his counterpart Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhary announced after the meeting.

The two officials, however, refused to take any question after they briefed the media about the outcome of the meeting.

During the joint briefing they also announced that India and Pakistan were also looking at a mechanism to facilitate religious tourism.