Barack Obama locks Manmohan Singh in an embrace soon after landing at Palam airport in Delhi. The US President hugged Singh after shaking hands with him and greeted Gursharan Kaur with a peck on her cheek. The atmospherics could not but revive memories of another hug, bearing testimony to the seismic shift in geopolitical relations. At the 1983 Non-Aligned Movement summit in New Delhi, Fidel Castro stunned the audience and Indira Gandhi by locking her in a bear hug before handing her the chairperson’s gavel. The then Indian Prime Minister appeared taken aback and Castro a bit surprised at the reaction but the loud applause that broke out made it the most unforgettable moment of the summit. (PTI picture)

New Delhi, Nov. 7: President Barack Obama’s artful refusal to play to the ultra-nationalist gallery and wield the whip on “terrorist” Pakistan could well strengthen the chosen course of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his core foreign policy team on resolving prickly issues with their neighbour.

However, many remain a little beguiled by Obama’s “stable Pakistan” exhort to India in isolation of a spelt-out framework for getting there.

Obama finally uttered the P-word during an interaction with students in Mumbai this morning to the relief of critics carping over his “soft-pedalling” on the terror issue. However, to their continued frustration, he remained unprepared to brand or blacklist Pakistan, preferring to advocate engagement over denouncement.

He also said, during the course of an extempore and extended response to a student’s question, that while the US “stands in support” of peace on the subcontinent, it is for India and Pakistan to negotiate a peace that would help both nations move ahead.

“I am absolutely convinced that the country that has the biggest stake in a stable Pakistan is India,” Obama said, in what became the centerpiece of a college-campus chat that quickly began to ring above the Indo-US diplomatic table. “If Pakistan is unstable, it is bad for India; if Pakistan is stable, it is good.”

Paraphrased, this is broadly the burden of what Prime Minister Singh has been trying to convince the Indian nation — and political opposition within and outside his party — of, since he signed that controversial joint statement with Pakistani counterpart Yousaf Raza Gilani at Sharm-el Sheikh last summer.

Repeatedly since Sharm-el Sheikh, Singh has defended his adopted line arguing: “We cannot choose our neighbours, we have to live with Pakistan. Both of us stand to benefit hugely if we can establish peace at a time of global economic change. If you do not want war, engagement with Pakistan is the only option.”

Consequently, while Singh’s government has continued to push Islamabad — to little yield — on accountability and justice to be brought to the perpetrators of the 26/11 attack and on dismantling the Pakistan-based terror infrastructure, he has also marshalled multi-layered engagement in search of a resolution which, he is not scared to admit, is down a long and tortuous path.

A senior diplomat familiar with the blow-hot-blow-cold of Indo-Pak ties said: “Of course, Pakistan is a very important issue for us and a constant terror-irritant and it is bound to come up during closed-door talks, but it is best discussed in private, insulated from the street and street sentiment. This is an immensely complex relationship with multiple interlinkages into the world we live in. We understand what he is saying, we think it is a subtle endorsement of what our Prime Minister is attempting to do — trust but verify.

“Obama has said there is much wrong with Pakistan, he said he himself is aggressively telling them to contain terror, but equally he is saying don’t stop engaging. What’s wrong with that? What comes of calling them names?”

Contrary to disaffection in some sections that Obama is “trying to put the onus for straightening ties on India and Pakistan”, South Block’s understanding also is that his position is an endorsement of the Indian stand that steadfastly opposes third-party intervention.

However, former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal wondered that while the argument that “stable Pakistan is good for India” remained a truism, who’d spell out what would make Pakistan stable and what India could do to that end? Obama’s public remarks so far have not thrown any light on a blueprint to making Pakistan stable.

“The truth is,” said retired diplomat Girija Shankar Bajpai, “even the Americans are confounded about it, they are blundering all over Pakistan and Afghanistan. It isn’t easy to find answers.”

Pakistan is key to America’s pursuit of Osama bin Laden and the objective of uprooting terror from Afghanistan. But official circles are disappointed that there was no US stamp on the Indian position that Pakistan’s government or its agencies sponsor terror in India.

Even so, New Delhi appears keen, for reasons that go beyond Pakistan and terror, that the current visit becomes another step in what it calls the “continuum” of improving ties. There may be a few evident clues to suggest that there is a tacit understanding in the Singh establishment of Obama refraining from going explicit in his Pakistan-bashing.

The foreign office has let out no sign of annoyance, on record or on background. Prime Minister Singh, having watched the Mumbai interaction, threw aside protocol to receive the Obamas personally on their arrival.

In the few extended minutes that the welcomes were exchanged in Palam’s Technical Area Airbase, it was evident nothing had happened so far that violated the agreed script or spirit of the presidential visit.

Bonhomie sparkled on television, and the little summit-level tarmac chat resulted in a significant rearrangement of the evening’s plans. Singh and Obama met privately for almost an hour ahead of their not-so-private dinner at 7 Race Course Road. The meeting was described as “no-aides, no-notes”.

The ladies, Michelle and Gursharan Kaur and other members of the Singh family, spent time in another room.

Some of the knee-jerk street sentiment generated by Obama’s remarks — actively spurred and mongered in live television studios — was that Obama had fallen short of “Indian expectations” that he would stand and be counted among those sending out a “strong and unambiguous” message against Islamabad’s “organised export of terror” to India, most stunningly manifest in the 26/11 Mumbai assault.

The former Indian high commissioner to Pakistan, G. Parthasarathy, gloated over what he thought was vindication of his long-held view that the US would put its strategic interests in Pakistan-Afghanistan above empathising with, or addressing, India’s concerns on terror.

But a foreign office player cautioned: “What matters really is not on the microphones and on television screens, it happens quietly in backrooms. There will always be differences between nations but India and America have for a variety of reasons gradually arrived at a new place.”