One leader sees his last chance for peace. The other, perhaps, sees his political mortality amid repeated assassination attempts and political opposition.
But more than two years after their last summit ended in failure, India's prime minister and Pakistan's president have set the groundwork for talks that could end years of enmity.
In a region long accustomed to the threat of war, peace may actually be at hand.
"Now, I am a happy man," Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf told reporters after the surprise announcement that the two countries would soon begin comprehensive talks. Among the issues: the divided, bloodied Himalayan region of Kashmir, where more than a half-century of bitterness has been nurtured.
South Asia has seen optimism before in relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbors. In July 2001, Musharraf traveled to Agra, India to meet Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in a summit many hoped would lead to peace. Instead, within hours of its ending officials were simply trying to show it hadn't been an utter failure.
But things have changed dramatically since that summit, and the chances of peace appear much better now.
If nothing else, it's clear both nations want peace, a desire reflected, in part, by the careful way expectations were kept in check in the days before the announcement, and the quiet, behind-the-scenes discussions held during the regional summit in Islamabad that led to Tuesday's announcement.
"The establishment is determined not to repeat the wrenching experience of the Agra summit in July 2001, where runaway popular expectations ... could not be matched by the outcomes," C. Rajamohan, an Indian security analyst, wrote in The Hindu newspaper before the meeting.
Less than a year after the Agra summit, the two countries nearly went to war for the fourth time, after a militant attack on the Indian parliament building that New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-backed militants.
But the past few months have seen regular steps forward, with a truce declared along the line of control that divides Kashmir, where the two countries exchanged near-daily weapons fire. While militant violence continues in Kashmir, road and air links, severed after the parliament attack, have been restored. Peace -- and, both sides hope, the trade that would come with it -- have increasingly seemed possible.
"There was a growing realization on both sides that peace is a necessity," Pakistani analyst Zahid Malik said in Islamabad.
Not that peace is a certainty. Just a few months ago Musharraf was blasting India for suppressing "the legitimate struggle of the Kashmiri people." Indian diplomats, for their part, accused Pakistan of the "diplomacy of abuse and hate."
Easing relations began in April, when the often-ailing Vajpayee stunned the region with the announcement he was ready to resume dialogue.
"This round of talks will be decisive, and at least for my life, these will be the last," Vajpayee told the Indian Parliament at the time. "We don't want to forget the past, but we don't want to remain slaves of the past."
Many analysts believe the 79-year-old Vajpayee is desperate to forge a legacy of peace for himself. The prime minister has, as Rajamohan put it, an "irrepressible enthusiasm for exploring different options to break the political deadlock."
Now, with Indian elections expected in a few months, Vajpayee may be hoping to solidify diplomatic gains before the vote.
Musharraf, for his part, in mid-December signaled new flexibility on Kashmir, saying Pakistan was willing to look beyond a long-standing UN resolution that calls for a referendum in the disputed region to decide its own future. The resolution has been the basis of Pakistan's Kashmir policy for decades, but is strongly opposed by India.
It was a significant move for Musharraf, who faces bitter opposition from hard-liners at home, including some in his own army and intelligence services, who see him as a traitor to the Kashmiri militant movement and to the militant Muslim cause in general.
In the past month, he has twice survived assassination attempts.
But if talking peace costs Musharraf politically at home, it will earn him tremendous capital with the US, which is desperate to keep him as an ally in its war against terrorism.
Enmity has been part of India-Pakistan relations since the two countries were carved from British India at independence in 1947. The "partition" of colonial India cost the lives of over a million people, as Muslims went to the new nation of Pakistan and Hindus to modern India.
Today, Kashmir is at the center of their continued bitterness. A Muslim region whose Hindu prince chose to align himself with India in 1947 -- almost certainly against the wishes of his people -- Kashmir has been divided ever since by India and Pakistan.
Both nations claim the region in its entirety.
US President Donald Trump has gotten off to a head-spinning start in his foreign policy. He has pressured Denmark to cede Greenland to the United States, threatened to take over the Panama Canal, urged Canada to become the 51st US state, unilaterally renamed the Gulf of Mexico to “the Gulf of America” and announced plans for the United States to annex and administer Gaza. He has imposed and then suspended 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico for their roles in the flow of fentanyl into the United States, while at the same time increasing tariffs on China by 10
As an American living in Taiwan, I have to confess how impressed I have been over the years by the Chinese Communist Party’s wholehearted embrace of high-speed rail and electric vehicles, and this at a time when my own democratic country has chosen a leader openly committed to doing everything in his power to put obstacles in the way of sustainable energy across the board — and democracy to boot. It really does make me wonder: “Are those of us right who hold that democracy is the right way to go?” Has Taiwan made the wrong choice? Many in China obviously
About 6.1 million couples tied the knot last year, down from 7.28 million in 2023 — a drop of more than 20 percent, data from the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs showed. That is more serious than the precipitous drop of 12.2 percent in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the saying goes, a single leaf reveals an entire autumn. The decline in marriages reveals problems in China’s economic development, painting a dismal picture of the nation’s future. A giant question mark hangs over economic data that Beijing releases due to a lack of clarity, freedom of the press
US President Donald Trump last week announced plans to impose reciprocal tariffs on eight countries. As Taiwan, a key hub for semiconductor manufacturing, is among them, the policy would significantly affect the country. In response, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) dispatched two officials to the US for negotiations, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC) board of directors convened its first-ever meeting in the US. Those developments highlight how the US’ unstable trade policies are posing a growing threat to Taiwan. Can the US truly gain an advantage in chip manufacturing by reversing trade liberalization? Is it realistic to
RSS