ASIA/INDIA - Local Church fully supports peace talks between India and Pakistan

New Delhi (Fides Service) - “The local Church is strongly in favour of peace talks: we hope India-Pakistan relations will be normalised at all levels, political, economic, commercial, cultural and religious”, Father Babu Joseph, spokesman of the Indian Bishops’ Conference, told Fides after the first explorative talks between Indian and Pakistan diplomats in Islamabad. “At the political level - he said- the positive fact is that relations between India and Pakistan are improving”. With regard to the role of the Church in India Father Joseph says “our good relations between local Churches in India and Pakistan can serve to support and strengthen the peace process which we hope will go ahead because hostilities have caused years of suffering to ordinary people especially in the disputed border region of Kashmir”.
Father Joseph told Fides: “The Church and many humanitarian agencies have always worked for peace and assisted the people suffering because of the violence. It should be recalled that both in India and Pakistan, Christians are small minorities living in a majority of a different religion, respectively Hinduism and Islam. We have suffered from discrimination and persecution, but the experience allowed us to sympathise with those who suffer, like the people of Kashmir, it strengthened our awareness and commitment to work for peace and harmony”.
After two days of talks between India and Pakistan, so-called “composite dialogue” at the diplomatic level in Islamabad, marked the start of a process of stabilisation among the sides, producing a “road map” mainly with regard to the situation in Kashmir.
The road map calendar of events includes a session of talks every month: March to re-establish transport between the two nations; April joint measures to prevent drug trafficking and crime in general in the border area; May talks will focus on nuclear power; May-June foreign secretaries’ meeting on Kashmir; July: war on terrorism and economic cooperation; lastly an August summit between the respective foreign ministers.
India-Pakistan talks in Agra in 1999 stalled when a visit to India by Pakistan head of state General Pervez Musharraf was unsuccessful and in the same year General Musharraf unleashed a new scene of war in Kashmir.
An attack on India’s Parliament in 2001 (one month after the 11/11 Twin Tower terrorist attack in New York), provoked an escalation of violence: mass concentration of troops on the border, state of maximum alert, a situation deeply concerning for the international community since both parties are in possession of nuclear weapons.
General Musharraf’s move with the approval of parliament to bring Pakistan closer to the United States and join the war on terrorism was a step welcomed by the Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee.
However the terms of a Kashmir agreement must still be decided: Musharraf does not intend to withdraw Pakistan’s call for a referendum in Kashmir, a request sanctioned by the United Nations in 1948, while Delhi has no intention of envisaging that Kashmir, one day, could belong to another country.
A first step is to consolidate the cease fire agreement reached in November and use every means to rebuild mutual trust among the people in the travailed border area.
(PA) (Agenzia Fides 19/2/2004 lines 48 words 531)