The long-delayed press conference by Indian External Affairs Minister S M Krishna and our Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi at the end of yesterday’s talks was low key. There were no surprises and the two men sat next to one another speaking in measured tones – they wanted nobody to misunderstand what they said. Yet what they said was very little and there was not much room for misunderstanding it. Reading between the lines there are a number of positives. The first was that they took longer in their discussions than was expected, a sign that they were at least prepared to sit around a table with an agenda that was clearly wide-ranging. Secondly, they are going to be doing it again and our foreign minister has accepted an invitation from his Indian counterpart to visit in the near future. Thirdly it is obvious that even though there may be a willingness to discuss more openly and frankly the issues which both divide as well as bind us together – few of them are easily soluble.

There are Confidence-Building Measures (CBMs) that are at the margins where movement can clearly be made – an exchange of prisoners accused of petty crimes for instance, and here there was a welcome mention of the fishermen that both sides hold. A resolution of the Sir Creek dispute on which we have requested that the Indians put their proposal to us in writing. On more tricky ground there was a suggestion that both sides are fighting a common enemy, terrorism, and that fighting the enemy together made more sense than doing it separately. Foreign Minister Qureshi pointed to ‘a change of mood’ in Pakistan which might enable that to happen rather better than it does at the moment. Words like ‘useful’ and positive’ peppered the press conference throughout and the impression was given that we have moved on from ‘talks about talks’ to ‘talks about what we do next’. To the man on the street this may seem like little more than a rearrangement of the chairs, but in diplomatic terms this is a significant shift in the currents that run between us. There is no quick fix, but at least the possibility of a fix for some things is on the table. Keep talking.