IT is not often that we see the foreign secretaries of Pakistan and India appear at a joint press conference and actually endorse each other's point of view.

This welcome event occurred when foreign secretaries Salman Bashir and Nirupama Rao told the press in Islamabad last week that they both felt “much more optimistic about a good outcome at the ministerial-level talks and good prospects for the two countries in terms of our relationship”.

While Bashir claimed that his meeting with Rao was “marked with a great deal of cordiality, sincerity and earnestness”, the latter too, was upbeat, remarking that the two countries had expressed commitment to a “serious, sustained and comprehensive dialogue to re-engage each other”.

More importantly, Rao affirmed that India was ready for an uninterrupted dialogue with Pakistan, emphasising the need to “jointly work together” towards the goal of resolving outstanding issues and “to deny terrorist elements any opportunity to derail the process of improvement of relations between our two countries”.

As expected, the Indian foreign secretary emphasised that terrorism remained a major concern for India. She also made clear her opposition to the format known as the composite dialogue process, insisting that nomenclatures meant little, while giving an assurance that India would not oppose the raising of any issue by Pakistan. Rao also said that it was time to look ahead and not get trapped 'in road maps' and 'agendas'.

Bashir rightly pointed out that it was not the government alone that was in favour of a comprehensive dialogue with India but the major political parties too were committed to the normalisation process. In response to a question about whether the military and intelligence favoured this approach, he stressed that “everyone speaks from one page”.

The meeting appears to have succeeded in achieving its limited purpose, which was to set the agenda for the foreign ministers' meeting scheduled this month. More importantly, if press comments and body language are reflective of what transpired at the meeting, it confirms the impression of a shift in India's tone. The real test, however, will be the foreign ministers' meeting.

This is because the initial Indian reaction to the Mumbai terror attacks was to suspend the peace talks, demand that Islamabad clamp down on the terrorist networks and bring the perpetrators of the tragedy to justice, while rejecting Pakistan's offer of cooperation. Next, India sought to organise an international campaign to isolate Pakistan and to extract concessions from it.

This confirmed three fundamental flaws in India's approach. One, it underestimated Pakistan's resilience and its ability to resist foreign pressure; two, it overestimated its own influence in the international arena; and three, it failed to appreciate Pakistan 'strength' on account of its strategic linkages with China and its 'indispensability' to the US in its goals in Afghanistan.

India may therefore do well to give greater credence to Pakistan's assurances and intentions, rather than dwell on its past behaviour. Nor should India ignore the complex nature of Pakistani polity and the interplay of various institutions and interest groups.

As for Pakistan, it is true that after initial hiccups in the wake of the Mumbai terror attacks, it was able to react with greater skill and intelligence than generally appreciated. For one, the security and intelligence agencies were able to approach the issue with good understanding of what needed to be done, which was to express horror at the Mumbai attacks, while reiterating willingness to share and exchange vital information. At the same time, national consensus at home enabled the army to undertake massive operations against the militants, while the government kept trying to get the normalisation process back on track.

This led to conflicting reactions in India, as evident from the embarrassment caused to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh by his own party colleagues, when he was made to resile from the commitment he gave to Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on the dialogue process at Sharm-el-Shaikh.

Nevertheless, the initial impression created by the foreign secretaries' talks needs to be welcomed and built upon. Irrespective of the factors that led to this shift in India's position, Pakistan needs to take advantage of the situation. At the same time, we must recognise that the resumption of the normalisation process does not represent a victory for us, nor should we approach it as a favour to India.

Pakistan's myriad problems are many and fundamentally of our own making. Admittedly, peace with India will not resolve them but would be beneficial for us domestically and in the international community which has come to worry about and be worried by us. At home, the economy is in dire straits, with inflation, particularly relating to food items, soaring. This is underscored by the highly tragic, new phenomenon of family suicides.

Moreover, most domestic observers and international agencies are convinced that both as regards the standard of governance and level of corruption, the government's record gives little cause for either celebration or complacency. Even more worrying are the growing energy shortages, which have virtually crippled industry, sharply impacting our exports, especially at a time when we are demanding greater market access to the US and the EU.

Tragically, not only is the government not doing anything meaningful to resolve the problem but the Americans are so obsessed with punishing the Iranians, rather than assisting Pakistan that they have the temerity to warn Pakistan to stay away from the gas pipeline project with Iran, which many energy experts are convinced, is the only technically feasible and economically viable source of gas supplies.

But the prime minister was initially reported as saying that Pakistan would comply with American sanctions on Iran. Whether it was ignorance or naivety, he appears to have been blissfully unaware of our long-standing policy of not abiding by sanctions imposed by one country. Even though he backtracked the very next day, one never knows if it was a mistake, or a Freudian slip revealing the mental subservience of our rulers to foreign powers.