It is a pity that neither Delhi nor Islamabad has ever acquired the faculty of imagining the suffering and joy of the other, to say nothing of their respective concerns and limitations, and the two governments are all too ready to lapse into recriminations at the drop of a hat. They attribute evil and devious motives to each other and reach for whatever is at hand to threaten the other. This is all the more surprising because civil society in both countries is strongly averse to conflict. A fact repeatedly ascertained by polls and people-to-people exchanges. If this message is now finally resonating in Delhi, and is the reason why India wishes to resume the dialogue, it would be a cause for rejoicing, unfortunately it is not.
The reason is more prosaic.
Delhi has finally accepted that its earlier policy of threatening war and risking worse was unwise. 
It merely encouraged the terrorists and disheartened well-wishers; most of all,
it proved self-defeating. For India to find out what policy may work by finding out what did not work was hardly savvy.
Why it took so long for the penny to drop is not clear. Admittedly, India was hurt and enraged by what happened at Mumbai. Any country would be; but lashing out at Pakistan, which is itself reeling under terror as perhaps no other country in the world, revealed insensitivity to Pakistan's predicament and an ignorance of the inefficiency of subcontinental bureaucracy that was breathtaking. Naturally, it only made matters worse.
Hence, after the initial upsurge of sympathy for India, Islamabad went into lockdown, convinced that India was bent on revenge rather than justice and an opportunity to strengthen cooperation was lost. No wonder in those dark days after the Mumbai attack many felt that if there was any light that they thought they had glimpsed at the end of the tunnel (as a result of progress in the composite dialogue) it was the light of an oncoming train.
Of course, the dialogue will not restart exactly where it was broken off by India. We cannot pick up the thread as if Mumbai never happened, nor should we. Terrorism is understandably for India the single most important item on the agenda. But its being projected by Delhi as the only item is imprudent. It may once again stall the talks because Pakistan is as interested in making progress on Kashmir and water-sharing as in cooperation to combat terrorism. Bickering over the agenda must not be allowed to derail the process. A middle ground needs to be found and, what is more, discernible progress recorded, or else one side or the other will lose interest in the dialogue.
Frankly, it is better not to have any talks than for them to fail amid a welter of accusations.
If the dialogue resumes, Pakistan owes its Indian visitors a detailed accounting of all the steps it has taken to apprehend and punish the terrorists involved and, in particular, why some accused by India are not yet behind bars. And also why it has not been possible, on the evidence proffered by India and whatever we have gathered, to obtain a conviction.
No doubt, in return, we would want to know what has been the outcome of the Samjhauta Express enquiry.{The biggest goof-up by Congress Govt for votebank politics 
} Going the extra mile to allay mutual suspicions can only do good.
Sadly, in both countries there are those who harbour mindless hate for the other side. Hate, which has penetrated their innards; and unless they hate someone or some other nation or creed they can't be happy. But,
because in a democracy merely harbouring hate is insufficient to deprive a man of his liberty, they escape punishment.
That is why presumably Bal Thackeray is not in prison in India and, one suspects, Hafiz Saeed in Pakistan.{In one plain stroke , it's == 
} Nor do preconceived notions, suspicions and historical ill-will have any place when it comes to negotiations. A road that goes from the eye to the heart without going through the intellect is obviously the wrong one.
Hence, Pakistan and India must address their mutual concerns devoid of anger or malice, lest the next hiatus in relations, when it comes, does not last longer and end in disaster. This is not an idle caution, nor a needless one. The degree of animus some of the participants bring to the table is inexcusable.
The timing of the Indian initiative has understandably aroused speculation; it even surprised Indian diplomats. Prime Minister Gilani ascribed it to "international pressure." India, on the other hand, claims that it is "a calculated initiative to unlock the dialogue process." Chances are that it is both.
Indeed, there may well be a third factor, a "calculated" and perhaps conjoined Indo-US initiative, not so much to "unlock the dialogue process" as to help America enlist Pakistan's grudging support for the forthcoming "surge." And, if none of the above, then at the very least it serves as an encouraging
curtain-raiser for the intensified fighting that is expected to commence momentarily in Afghanistan as the American "surge" gets underway, for which Pakistan's cooperation is indispensable.
Viewed thus, the decision to resume talks with Pakistan was not so much a belated admission by India of a policy that had failed but rather
an astute manoeuvre to augment American pressure on Pakistan prior to the surge.
Actually, nearly all of India's moves, of late, have thrown into bold relief its fixation to play a major role in Afghanistan. According to one Indian analyst, India considers the prospect of a regime in Kabul that is unfriendly to India as intolerable; that Pakistan on no account be allowed to regain a foothold in Afghanistan, and that, at the very least, a fundamentalist regime of the type of the Taliban not take root in Kabul, because, "a significant part of the terrorist infrastructure that was groomed in Afghanistan was directed against India."
While the writer is Indian, in opinion and outlook he speaks like a contemporary American and that too of the neo-con mould.{Instead, the writer should have been lobbying for paki strategic depth} It seems that India will make use of any argument to indulge its temptation to interfere in the internal affairs of Afghanistan and delve in the "Afghan nest of snakes" that has proved the undoing of so many, including Pakistan, much like others before it.
All of which only reinforces Hegel's belief that "what experience and history teach is this---that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it."{Very true of GoI & WKK brigade }
Not that India or Pakistan will likely be dissuaded by what history recounts. Hence, for the foreseeable future, there will always be an Afghan dimension to the relationship that India forges with Pakistan, adding, thereby, one more complicating and needless factor to an already vexed relationship.
As talks resume, the war in Afghanistan drags on and Indian and Pakistani policymakers grapple with designing the architecture for peace in the region they could usefully recall the caution that the Chinese sage Chi Wen Tzu proffered to his monarch two thousand years ago: "Think three times before taking any step, even though twice would have been enough."
Perhaps, if his caution had been heeded after Mumbai, much of what happened would not have transpired, and today both countries would have been implementing agreements that now seem distant and difficult.
in the Indian capital's upscale Vasant Vihar diplomatic enclave.
. I posted it on page 8 of this very thread:
).