Pakistan's Nawaz Sharif invited for Narendra Modi's swearing-in - Livemint

The foreign ministry will hold a special meeting in New Delhi on Wednesday to coordinate the arrangements for the gesture that could see leaders from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka travelling to Delhi. Photo: PTI

New Delhi: In an unprecedented move, the incoming government led by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is inviting heads of state and government of South Asian nations, including Pakistan, to attend the swearing-in of prime minister-elect Narendra Modi on Monday.

If indeed the heads of state accept the invitation, it creates the space for the new government to reboot India’s fraying relations with its immediate neighbours. It has also deftly put the political onus of participation on neighbouring countries, especially in the case of Pakistan, where the military has always opposed normalization of relations with India.

The foreign ministry held a special meeting in New Delhi on Wednesday to coordinate the arrangements for the gesture that could see leaders from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka travelling to Delhi over the weekend.

That Modi was planning to invite leaders from South Asia, whose countries including India are grouped under South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), was first reported by the Hindustan Times on Wednesday.

On Wednesday evening, foreign ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin said, “As of now, letters of invitation have been sent to seven SAARC leaders,” implicitly suggesting leaders of other countries too could be invited.

“Foreign secretary Sujatha Singh has written to her counterparts inviting leaders for the swearing-in ceremony. The letters were sent at 3pm today,” Akbaruddin said.

“All the leaders are expected Monday morning and meetings with Mr. Modi are expected to take place on Tuesday,” added a person close to the development.

Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said that there was no question of not welcoming Modi’s decision to invite all heads of the SAARC nations. “These are the prime minister’s prerogatives, and certainly we are not here to interfere with the prerogatives of the prime minister. It is a part of governance, as I said it is early days yet we wish well for something good happens. We will be very happy,” Singhvi told reporters.

A Pakistani diplomat confirmed that the Pakistan leadership had been invited. “We have sent the invite onwards to Islamabad. We expect an answer tomorrow,” he said.

A Sri Lankan diplomat said President Mahinda Rajapaksa will attend the ceremony to be held at Rashtrapati Bhavan. Rajapaksa is currently on a four-day visit to China and is expected to travel to Delhi at the end of that visit, a person close to the development said.

Officials from other South Asian embassies in New Delhi too said they have received invitaitions. None of them offered any further comments. They all declined to be named.

“I think it is a novel and good gesture,” said S.D. Muni, former professor of international relations at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

“I am not sure though how the neighbours will respond because they would like to have substantial discussions with the new government here. They will come if it is not politically costly for them.”

Narendra Modi led the BJP to victory in the national elections, whose results were announced on 16 May. The party garnered 282 seats, while the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance secured 336 seats in the 545-member Lok Sabha.

The gesture by the incoming government was hailed by Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah . “Excellent move by @narendramodi to invite SAARC leaders, especially Pak PM for his swearing in. Hope this is beginning of sustained talks.,” he said in a post on the micro-blogging website Twitter .

Kashmir has been the trigger for three of the four wars between India and Pakistan since 1947, with both the countries claiming sovereignty over it.

Though the previous Congress-led government, headed by prime minister Manmohan Singh , had given top priority to relations with neighbours, given its philosophy that a peaceful periphery was required for India’s economic growth, ties with many countries deteriorated.

Singh had advocated “out-of-the-box” thinking in dealing with countries in South Asia in line with its policy that destinies of the countries in the region were interlinked.

India’s exports to the SAARC countries totalled $17.3 billion between April 2013 and March 2014, according to provisional figures given by India’s ministry of commerce. Imports from the region in the same period totalled $2.45 billion.

India’s total exports to the world in the same period stood at $312 billion while total imports were at $450 billion.

According to analyst Muni, “Though Singh did talk about the ‘out-of-the-box’ solutions, nothing really out-of-the-box happened or was implemented. There was a lot of talk about out of the box but I don’t think he or his government was prepared for the out-of-the-box steps.”

Ties with Pakistan hit a low following the 2008 Mumbai attacks and put on hold a four-year-old peace dialogue that was resumed after a 2004 visit to Pakistan by then BJP prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee . The dialogue resumed in February 2011 but stalled again following the killing of Indian soldiers in Kashmir along the de facto border between the two countries.

India is upset that Pakistan hasn’t yet taken steps to normalize trade ties with India, despite promising to do so.

With Bangladesh, Singh’s government was seen as unable to deliver on key issues including ratification of the Land Boundary Agreement signed in 2011. The pact which envisages an exchange of enclaves under the adverse possession required parliamentary approval, which Singh could not deliver given that the Congress-led UPA needed to bring the BJP on board.

Neither was Singh able to sign an agreement with Bangladesh for the sharing of waters of the Teesta river given opposition from former coalition ally—West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress party. The Teesta river flows through Northeast India and forms the border between Sikkim and West Bengal before joining the Brahmaputra in Bangladesh. It is one of 54 rivers that flow through India and Bangladesh.

Ties with Sri Lanka have been on an uneven keel since 2009—end of the three-decade old civil war in the island nation. India has been pressing Sri Lanka to bring into the national mainstream the island’s minority Tamils, whose sense of alienation spawned the civil war. Succumbing to pressure from key ally in Tamil Nadu, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), UPA twice voted against Sri Lanka’s human rights record.

India’s neighbourhood policy received another jolt when the government in Maldives decided to terminate the $511 million contract given to an international consortium including India’s GMR Group based on “legal, technical and economic issues regarding the agreement”.

This came after India supported then Maldives president Mohammed Waheed Hassan , following accusations against Hassan of ousting his predecessor Mohamed Nasheed in a coup. Anuja contributed to this story.