MUMBAI // They met. They shook hands. And they exchanged tough words.
Significantly, they promised to meet again. That by itself was enough to render the rare, 40-minute rendezvous between the Indian prime minister and Pakistani president a "positive development".
For the first time since last November's terrorist attack in Mumbai, Manmohan Singh and Asif Ali Zardari sat down in the Silver Room of the Hyatt Regency to meet up on the sidelines of a multilateral summit in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg.
As expected, the meeting was focused on the singular issue of terrorism, as will any future negotiations between the two nuclear rivals. There was no sweet-talking. Mr Singh conveyed India's growing frustration with Pakistan's inaction against the perpetrators of the Mumbai attack and exhorted him to take strong action against terrorist organisations on its soil. He also lamented the release of Hafiz Saeed, the suspected mastermind of the Mumbai attack.
"We must get an assurance from Pakistan that its territory will not be used for terror against India," he told Mr Zardari.
Despite the acrimony, observers point out that this meeting held the promise of a thaw between the two bitter rivals and could restart the stalled Indo-Pakistan dialogue process.
The foreign secretaries of the two countries are expected to meet again in mid July. And Pakistan is pushing for a fully-fledged resumption of the dialogue process
"Both countries stand to gain by resuming dialogue," said Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Pakistan's foreign minister. "It will be a sensible thing to resume dialogue as soon as possible. It will be in mutual interest to do so."
India and Pakistan have both shared a tenuous relationship since independence, especially over the territorial dispute of Kashmir. They have met on numerous occasions, and promised to resolve the dispute, but the dialogue process was held hostage by the issue of terrorism. India has repeatedly accused Pakistan of not being serious enough to dislodge the terror infrastructure on its soil.
From the late 1990s until the Mumbai attack, after waging two bloody wars over Kashmir, the two countries evinced a serious interest in negotiations.
But the dialogue was rocked by a series of crises - nuclear tests conducted by India in 1998, followed by a similar set of tests by Pakistan. Relations nosedived after the 1999 Kargil war. And the two countries came perilously close to war after a brazen terrorist attack on the Indian parliament in 2002.
However, in 2004, after the Congress-led coalition was sworn into office, the stalled process restarted to make some key gains. Both sides negotiated a framework for the settlement of the Kashmir. But, as expected, the process collapsed again after the Mumbai attacks.
However, analysts point out that both countries are victims of terrorist attacks. Pakistan is nearly in the throes of a civil war, as it tackles an increasingly belligerent Taliban insurgency on its soil. Considering both countries face a common enemy, the two countries should work together and not cease the dialogue process every time a terrorist strike happens in India, they say.
Mr Qureshi yesterday called for more international aid to combat the Taliban, saying the extremists pose a real threat of penetrating into India and the Gulf.
"For India, there are only two interconnected objectives in Pakistan," said C Raja Mohan, a professor at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. "They are to defeat those who organise violent extremism against India and promote a democratic transformation in Pakistan."
All political energies must be directed towards these goals, he said, and not frittered away in secondary questions of procedure.
"Indian policy towards Pakistan over much of the past decade has suffered from a fundamental flaw," Siddharth Varadarajan, the strategic affairs editor of The Hindu, wrote in a recent column.
"We have been clear about our goal - the stopping of cross-border terrorism - but our preferred instrument for action - suspension of official dialogue and, at times, civil society engagement as well - does little to advance our 'core issue'."
Vardarajan points out that Pakistan in its battle with the Taliban is indirectly waging a war with anti-India elements within its territory and it should therefore be supportive of the war the Pakistani army is waging, and thus encourage the dialogue process.
Maintaining a posture of diplomatic hostility and a military high-alert do not help, he argues, nor do high-decibel or frequently repeated public demands for Pakistan to do more to fight terror.
"India has to ask itself whether the war being waged in Swat is a real war. The answer is that it seems to be. Is it then in India's interest that the [Taliban] is fought and defeated? Yes."
achopra@thenational.ae
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
READ MORE ABOUT CORONAVIRUS
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Test
Director: S Sashikanth
Cast: Nayanthara, Siddharth, Meera Jasmine, R Madhavan
Star rating: 2/5
The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
THE SPECS
Engine: 3.6-litre V6
Transmission: eight-speed automatic
Power: 285bhp
Torque: 353Nm
Price: TBA
On sale: Q2, 2020
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Specs
Engine: Electric motor generating 54.2kWh (Cooper SE and Aceman SE), 64.6kW (Countryman All4 SE)
Power: 218hp (Cooper and Aceman), 313hp (Countryman)
Torque: 330Nm (Cooper and Aceman), 494Nm (Countryman)
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh158,000 (Cooper), Dh168,000 (Aceman), Dh190,000 (Countryman)
Three tips from La Perle's performers
1 The kind of water athletes drink is important. Gwilym Hooson, a 28-year-old British performer who is currently recovering from knee surgery, found that out when the company was still in Studio City, training for 12 hours a day. “The physio team was like: ‘Why is everyone getting cramps?’ And then they realised we had to add salt and sugar to the water,” he says.
2 A little chocolate is a good thing. “It’s emergency energy,” says Craig Paul Smith, La Perle’s head coach and former Cirque du Soleil performer, gesturing to an almost-empty open box of mini chocolate bars on his desk backstage.
3 Take chances, says Young, who has worked all over the world, including most recently at Dragone’s show in China. “Every time we go out of our comfort zone, we learn a lot about ourselves,” she says.
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
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Getting there
Flydubai flies direct from Dubai to Tbilisi from Dh1,025 return including taxes
What drives subscription retailing?
Once the domain of newspaper home deliveries, subscription model retailing has combined with e-commerce to permeate myriad products and services.
The concept has grown tremendously around the world and is forecast to thrive further, according to UnivDatos Market Insights’ report on recent and predicted trends in the sector.
The global subscription e-commerce market was valued at $13.2 billion (Dh48.5bn) in 2018. It is forecast to touch $478.2bn in 2025, and include the entertainment, fitness, food, cosmetics, baby care and fashion sectors.
The report says subscription-based services currently constitute “a small trend within e-commerce”. The US hosts almost 70 per cent of recurring plan firms, including leaders Dollar Shave Club, Hello Fresh and Netflix. Walmart and Sephora are among longer established retailers entering the space.
UnivDatos cites younger and affluent urbanites as prime subscription targets, with women currently the largest share of end-users.
That’s expected to remain unchanged until 2025, when women will represent a $246.6bn market share, owing to increasing numbers of start-ups targeting women.
Personal care and beauty occupy the largest chunk of the worldwide subscription e-commerce market, with changing lifestyles, work schedules, customisation and convenience among the chief future drivers.
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
A MINECRAFT MOVIE
Director: Jared Hess
Starring: Jack Black, Jennifer Coolidge, Jason Momoa
Rating: 3/5
More coverage from the Future Forum
Batti Gul Meter Chalu
Producers: KRTI Productions, T-Series
Director: Sree Narayan Singh
Cast: Shahid Kapoor, Shraddha Kapoor, Divyenndu Sharma, Yami Gautam
Rating: 2/5
Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
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Captain Marvel
Director: Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck
Starring: Brie Larson, Samuel L Jackson, Jude Law, Ben Mendelsohn
4/5 stars
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In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions
Formula Middle East Calendar (Formula Regional and Formula 4)
Round 1: January 17-19, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 2: January 22-23, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 3: February 7-9, Dubai Autodrome – Dubai
Round 4: February 14-16, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 5: February 25-27, Jeddah Corniche Circuit – Saudi Arabia
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
