At least nine people, including six Afghan security officials, were killed and 19 others injured on Friday when a suicide bomber blew himself up at a check post on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in the troubled Balochistan province.
'The Indian side has realised that not talking to Pakistan has not served any useful purpose.'
It was apparently a night of horror in Arnia village of RS Pura sector in Jammu district, situated five kilometre from the International Border, when Pakistani troops resorted to high calibre mortar shelling on the civilian areas, leaving five dead and 34 injured.
Introducing a new irritant into the bilateral ties, Pakistan has complained to UN Security Council alleging that India was building a wall along the International Border in violation of the world body's resolutions.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems to have secured a rare concession from Pakistan that 'terrorism' and not the issue of Kashmir be the central theme of the India-Pakistan dialogue.
On the sidelines of the SCO visit in Ufa, the two heads met and decided to revive dialogue and find ways to expedite the trial of the Mumbai attacks.
'The incidents have remained confined to the paramilitary forces on both sides with both the armies scrupulously avoiding getting involved. While this incident has been going on, the LOC has been reasonably quiet. Cross border firing achieves no tactical or strategic aims and is more a symptom of hostility. Unfortunately, India has to learn to live with this. Like Israel, we must construct shelters for the border populations and be ready to retaliate in kind,' says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
The ceasefire violations and firing from across the Line of Control are "quite serious" and the government wants a "quick resolution" of the problem there, IAF Chief Arup Raha said.
Project Director Atif Majid said so far 86 per cent of the work on the corridor has been completed.
The corridor will connect the Dera Baba Nanak shrine in India's Punjab with Darbar Sahib at Kartarpur, just 4 kilometres from the International Border, located in Narowal district of Pakistan's Punjab province.
Pakistani security agencies on Thursday arrested two suspects involved in the car bomb blast outside the house of the 2008 Mumbai terror attack mastermind and chief of the banned Jamat-ud-Dawah (JuD) Hafiz Saeed, an official said.
'By beheading an Indian soldier, the Pakistan army has demonstrated its proclivity for barbaric medievalism.' 'The strategies adopted and the punishment inflicted by India must be made progressively more stringent with every new act of terrorism till the cost becomes prohibitive for Pakistan,' says Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd).
'India has to judge what Pakistan says to us, not what they say to a domestic audience,' a source tells Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com, explaining why India-Pakistan talks remain on track despite discordant noises from across the border.
'Attempts at long-term rapprochement have been rather feeble from both sides. The primary cause of the lack of progress is that these efforts do not appear to have the support of the Pakistan army,' says Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd).
In a turnaround, Pakistan asked for "more evidence and information" from India on the Mumbai attack case and asserted that talks cannot take place without Kashmir being on the agenda, barely three days after the two countries agreed to re-engage.
'It seems likely that the February 2019 crisis is over.'
Sidhu said that the corridor would promote peace and erase "enmity" between India and Pakistan and create infinite possibilities between them, including the resumption of cricket ties.
'India's policy makers need to pull their heads out of the sand and recognize the reality that Pakistan has supported and sponsored terrorism on Indian soil for more than three decades; a national counter-terrorism strategy must be evolved in the fullest consciousness of this fact, and of the continued hostility of the Pakistani nation-State to the very idea of India.'
Pakistan has made it clear that there can be no talks with India unless Kashmir is on the agenda.
Do Modi's foreign visits actually serve India or they nothing more than expensive tools for domestic positioning and image-building, asks Shehzad Poonawalla.
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