South Asia’s big rivals prepare to talk. Another bomb goes off

Pune mourns and hopesAFP

IN THE 15 months since Pakistani militants launched a three-day assault on Mumbai, India has been largely terror-free. This has enabled its prime minister, Manmohan Singh, despite much domestic opposition, to start rethreading the diplomatic ties that India cut after that outrage. Senior diplomats from India and Pakistan are due to meet in Delhi on February 25th. Yet on February 13th—the day after that meeting was announced—a bomb blast ripped through a café in Pune, in western Maharashtra, killing 11.

Almost as fast, Indian fingers pointed to Pakistan, which has an ugly record of launching terrorism in India. Most Indians with a view of the matter believe Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, was behind the Mumbai attack, though this is unproven. Many, including Indian politicians of all stripes, struggle to imagine any rapprochement with their old enemy. “Not talking is an option,” says Arun Jaitley, a hawkish leader of the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party. Yet the government’s response to the blast was restrained. It said the talks would go ahead—while stressing that its concerns over terrorism would dominate them.

This is a tribute to Mr Singh’s dogged—and rather lonely—search for peace. A growing fear in India that America, in its haste to leave Afghanistan, may allow Pakistan an influential role there may also have spurred re-engagement. Yet the promised dialogue is hardly inspiring. At best, it may lead to a cautious resumption of the former diplomatic process, but at a much less promising stage than before. Progress in the talks had slowed sharply, but the four-year effort had nonetheless yielded outlines to the solutions for many of the countries’ disputes, including the thorniest, the status of the divided region of Kashmir. The most many Indians now hope for is a dialogue serious enough to prevent war in the event of another Pakistan-linked atrocity on Indian soil.

The attack in Pune was claimed by a previously unheard of, possibly non-existent, Pakistani militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba Al Alami. But it may be home-grown. It looks similar to blasts carried out in four Indian cities in 2008 by a local terrorist group, the Indian Mujahideen (IM). As an opening salvo, or so the group claimed, on behalf of India’s much-maligned but previously pacific Muslim community, the IM spread fear. Yet most of its leaders have been arrested, and it has been quiet.

A connection has also been drawn between the blast and an intriguing terrorism suspect, David Headley, a Pakistani-born American arrested in America in October. A former agent of America’s Drug Enforcement Agency, Mr Headley is believed to have come under the influence of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani militant group accused of the Mumbai attacks, while working for the DEA in Pakistan. He has been accused, among other crimes, of carrying out reconnaissance for the group in Mumbai. Indian officials say he also cased targets in Pune, close to the blasted café.