India, Pakistan put a brave face on failure of Agra summit

Both countries are now trying to convince the world that the summit did not collapse. Summit talks were not a failure, asserted Indian External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh at a news conference here. “We will pick up the threads again” and the “process of peace will continue till it reaches its destination,” he said. In Islamabad Pakistani Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar laid stress on President Pervez Musharraf’s optimism about the future of India-Pakistan relations. The “inconclusive” Agra talks, said Sattar addressing a news conference, were the foundation of future India-Pakistan discussions. Both said the summit could not be seen as a failure, and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan agreed. “A sustained Indo-Pakistani dialogue, especially at the highest level, is sorely needed, and the summit should be seen as an important step,” his spokesman Fred Eckhard said. “It would have been too much to expect major breakthroughs.” In Pakistan, a hard-line group vowed to step up its armed struggle against Indian rule in Kashmir and said “jihad” was the only solution to the dispute. “Jihad will be accelerated and India will be dealt a fatal blow,” Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, head of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, told a news conference in Lahore. Both countries fielded their foreign minister to salvage the image of the summit, ahead of which public debate had focused on a menu of possible deals rather than whether it would fail. In Agra, Jaswant Singh said that Musharraf’s invitation to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to meet again in Islamabad still stood, as did the Indian leader’s acceptance.