By delineating bilateral relations from the larger SAARC format, and at the same time taking them up after the Islamabad summit had addressed major agendas, India and Pakistan have done well for themselves and for the region - without continuing to hold one the hostage of the other. It is another matter that the additional SAARC protocol on terrorism and SAFTA had much to do with the two nations, at the same time concerning others, as well. Success or failure for India and Pakistan on these issues would reflect on SAARC and its future.
While relaunching the 'dialogue process', it is not as if New Delhi has to take the Musharraf-Jamali promises, if any, at face value. Yet, if eternal peace in South Asia is the goal, India cannot ignore either, just as it could not overlook Zulfi Bhutto in his time, and Zia-ul-Haq, later. Both nations have made some positive moves on the 'Kashmiri front' at Islamabad. The India-Pakistan joint statement refers to 'all parties'. Musharraf, in turn, has refrained from referring to 'freedom-fighters', and said Kashmiris had to be "involved one way or the other". Either way, the haunting importance of Kashmir to India-Pakistan relations cannot be wished away, and what wars could not achieve in the past, maybe, talks can resolve in future.
India's concerns over terrorism are for real. So does seem to be the Pakistani realization, particularly in the light of the two recent attacks on Musharraf. There are no two countries better qualified to tackle global terrorism, jehadi and otherwise, better in each other's company. The Indian experience is multifarious and long, and jehadi terrorism is only the latest. In turn, Pakistan is the only civil State to understand the terrorist mind, it having master-minded much of it, already. It is not as if New Delhi expected Islamabad to crush all of anti-India terrorism at one go. Given its experience, India wants more of verifiable measures of the 'LoC ceasefire kind' before it could reassure itself that the Pakistani establishment was after all not behind the terror-strikes, any more.
Pakistan seems to have lived down the temptation of playing proxy war for jehadi groups that are otherwise unwilling to admit the 'Muslim nation' into the 'Islamic brotherhood', despite Islamabad possessing the only 'I-Bomb' in the world. If anything, it is this Bomb that seems to be making Pakistan vulnerable to a jehadi take-over than any Indian strikes, as postulated by Musharraf in the past. After Afghanistan, the Osamas of jehadi culture would still want to be faceless leaders of a Stateless people, and Pakistan would fit their bill.
There is also no denying the Pakistani need for an alternative 'national agenda' to Kashmir-centric, India-baiting, which alone in a way has kept the nation together over the past five decades and more. What fast-track economic reforms under Musharraf could not achieve, mutual cooperation with India in energy and trade, and also the South Asian economic union could do for it in a shorter time. India did not have the comfort either when it launched 'democratic socialism' in the fifties or 'economic reforms in the nineties, which in their own way have provided an 'internal national agenda' alongside the likes of Mandal and Mandir issues.
It takes a lot of courage and a large heart for a leader in Vajpayee's position to trust a nation and a man, after Agra, Kargil and Kandhahar and the 'Parliament attack', all in a matter of years when as Prime Minister he was still finding his feet. That way, for a nation that is yet to recover from the 'shock-and-stab' of 1962, the pro-peace mood on the Pakistan front is reflective of India's willingness to give the devil its due even under adverse conditions. The civil society in both nations has reacted positively thus far, and both India and Pakistan now have leaderships best suited to undertake the exercise. And that should be something for starters.
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