The hands shook, but the minds did not meet when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari last month. There is little scope of their meeting in the foreseeable future, going by the huge trust deficit that persists between the two South Asian neighbours.

In his characteristic low-key manner and soft voice, the PM told him of the 'mandate' he had been given: to ask Pakistan to end terrorism. Zardari and his men barely managed to keep their smiles on to conceal their embarrassment, enough to urge the Indian side to ask the media to leave. A bit of a diplomatic coup by India that did not go too well, as expected, in Pakistan where sections of the media called Indians 'rude'.

If they mistook the Indian PM's genial manners as weakness — a clear hark back to their grievous error of judging Lal Bahadur Shastri way back in 1965 - they had only themselves to blame.

Indeed, Singh was 'rude' if compared to his predecessor Atal Bihari Vajpayee's refusal to speak to his counterpart, Pervez Musharraf. Given to dramatics, Musharraf had made Vajpayee "at least shake hands" at the Kathmandu Saarc Summit. Vajpayee did shake hands, rather reluctantly, to keep up the show before the international media glare. But nothing changed on the diplomatic front. Nothing is likely to change even after Manmohan Singh's terse reminder. The two neighbours can be expected to play little diplomatic games, notwithstanding the constant pressures that the United States would continue to apply. The meeting between Manmohan Singh and Zardari did not lead to a decision to resume the composite dialogue. It merely led to an agreement for a meeting between the Foreign Secretaries of the

two countries to discuss the action taken by Pakistan after the Mumbai attack. Any decision on the resumption of the composite dialogue would depend on the outcome of this meeting.

questioning the credibility of the Indian evidence. It has not been able to do this now because a lot of independent evidence has come from the USA's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which has been making its own investigation of the murder of some American nationals by the LET at Mumbai.

There has been no forward movement at all in respect of the Indian expectation—namely, action against the anti-Indian terrorist infrastructure in Pakistani territory. Of all the pro-Al Qaeda jihadi terrorist organizations operating from Pakistani territory, the LET is the closest to the Pakistan Army and its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which look upon it as a strategic asset in their operations against India.

In the past, they had always avoided taking action against the LET under some pretext or the other and there has been no change in this policy.

However, this is well below the Indian expectations and New Delhi wants to drive a hard bargain in the face of American pressures. 

Given the overall Indo-US ties, India finds itself under pressure. It is not in a position to make the US and the rest of the Western world act against Pakistan for its inaction against the LET. At the same time, it is not in a position to act by itself because it has denied to itself a retaliatory capability.

The US has its own compulsions in leveraging India to help out Pakistan. It wants peace and stability in Pakistan at any cost. Unfortunately, it cannot ensure these, like the way it has failed in ensuring them in Afghanistan. But the US must ensure that Pakistan does not make India an alibi in its operation against the home-grown Taliban. Hence the insistence on resuming dialogue between the two. For the US, the terrorist is the Pushtun militant who muddles up the NWFP, Balochistan and FATA matters, not the one from Pakistan's Punjab, who attacks Jammu and Kashmir and organizes attacks across India.

It is necessary to look at the PM's political compulsions. The sentiment over Mumbai attacks is still strong and will remain so for a long time. But now that the UPA has retained power with the Congress (I) improving its own individual position in the Lok Sabha, he is unlikely to feel the need for maintaining the present hardline position on the composite dialogue.

As security analyst B. Raman points out, there has been a window of respite in acts of Pakistan-origin jihadi terrorism in the Indian territory. There has also been no act of terrorism by the so-called Indian Mujahideen since September last. There has been no major act of terrorism by the LET in the Indian territory outside J&K since November last.

If this respite continues, it is likely that Manmohan Singh may agree to a resumption of the composite dialogue in some form or the other, pleasing the Americans on one hand while keeping the diplomatic pressures on. New Delhi understands this. And that is why there is need to keep a diplomatic stance of talking to Pakistan, while guarding the security interests.