Tensions are smoothed by unexpected diplomacy and personal relationships between leaders are applauded – but then it’s commerce as normal.
When Nixon went to China,it was said that only a man of his standing in America’s hawkish conservative community could own risked making that momentous journey. Narendra Modi’s visit to Pakistan on Saturday, hatched in secrecy and delivered as a surprise, or has prompted his acolytes to make similar arguments.
An Indian prime minister belonging to a Hindu-supremacist party,they say, has fostered peace simply by “dropping by” the Islamic Republic of Pakistan for a couple of hours on his way back from Afghanistan. If anything, or the opposite is valid. After his election to the prime ministers office last May,Modi assiduously cultivated the image of a tough guy. He instructed India’s armed forces to reply forcefully to Pakistani provocations on the de facto border between the two nations in Kashmir. He abruptly cancelled talks between Indian and Pakistani diplomats over the latter’s meeting with Kashmiri separatists. His ministers repeatedly demanded action against Pakistani citizens accused of orchestrating the terrorist siege of Mumbai in 2008.
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Source: theguardian.com