Who played a mediator to resolve Indo-Pak deadlock on diplomats’ issue?

NEW DELHI: Pakistan and India ended their month-long stalemate over diplomats’ harassment with both sides issuing statements to settle the dispute. But latest reports suggest that national security advisers of both the countries intervened to clear the air.

According to Economic Times, Pakistan’s NSA Nasir Janjua and his Indian counterpart Ajit Doval helped India and Pakistan arrive at the March 30 rapprochement which has ended – for now – the standoff over harassment of diplomats and other staff.

It is reported that a telephonic conversation between Doval and Janjua on March 26 finally sealed the agreement between the two countries that the matter be resolved under the 1992 Code of Conduct (CoC) for the treatment of diplomatic/ consular personnel in India and Pakistan.

Indian high commissioner to Pakistan Ajay Bisaria and his counterpart here Sohail Mahmood had worked hard in Islamabad and Delhi respectively with local authorities to arrive at the understanding that the CoC be revived to address issues related to diplomats and diplomatic premises.

The engagements between the two NSAs have been the only form of any high-level contact between India and Pakistan in the past few years. The last substantive dialogue Doval and Janjua was in December 2017 in a meeting in Bangkok.

In the latest conversation, they also discussed the overall situation in bilateral ties and agreed to remain in touch.

The reports say that Doval strongly underlined India’s position that the raid on an Indian residential complex under construction in Islamabad on February 15 was way outside the bounds of acceptable behaviour, while Janjua asserted that this was the first time that even women and children of Pakistan diplomats were being harassed here.

The CoC upholds the “dignity and personal inviolability” of diplomatic/ consular personnel. It also clearly states that intrusive and aggressive surveillance and actions such as verbal and physical harassment, disconnecting of telephone lines, threatening telephone calls, pursuit in cars and unauthorised entry into residences shall not be resorted to.