Prime Minister Narendra Modi's surprise stop in Pakistan to meet his counterpart Nawaz Sharif has made quite a splash here, with the US media hailing the significance of his "spontaneous personal diplomacy".
The Wall Street Journal said Modi's "gesture" was "likely to lend momentum to a tentative reconciliation process between the estranged, nuclear-armed neighbours".
The influential Washington Post said that with his surprise stop in Pakistan, Modi had "pressed the reset button on the blow-hot-blow-cold relationship between the two nuclear-armed neighbours, paving the way for official dialogue to resume next month".
The New York Times said the tense relations between India and Pakistan "have long worried American policy makers, who fear that proxy wars between the two countries could flare into a real one".
"But with his flash of spontaneous personal diplomacy on Friday, Mr. Modi appeared to send a strong public message that the ambiguous course he has taken toward Pakistan has shifted to embrace engagement, not confrontation," it said.
With his surprise visit to Pakistan, Modi had "breathed new life into a long troubled relationship", said the Los Angeles Times.
Modi, it said citing analysts, "appears willing to endure criticism from hard-liners within his own Bharatiya Janata Party who oppose outreach to Pakistan, which they accuse of harboring Islamist militant groups that have frequently attacked India".
Noting that Modi "showed a knack for wielding what can be a potent diplomatic weapon-the element of surprise", Time magazine called his Friday visit to Pakistan as "The biggest surprise of all".
"How the dialogue between the two countries now unfolds remains to be seen," it said noting that Modi's predecessor Manmohan Singh "never made it across the border, with tensions between two countries rising in the aftermath of the November 2008 terrorist attacks on Mumbai".
Meanwhile, the State Department said Modi's overture towards Pakistan would "benefit the entire region".
"We welcome the December 25 talks between PM Modi and PM Sharif in Lahore. As we have long said, improved relations among neighbours will benefit the entire region," spokesperson John Kirby said in a statement.
EXPERTS HAIL MODI'S SURPRISE VISIT TO PAKISTAN
Strategic experts on Saturday welcomed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's historic, surprise visit to Pakistan as a major step aimed at rebuilding the derailed bilateral peace process.
Former diplomats and retired generals who have dealt with Pakistan said Modi's dramatic gesture of flying to Lahore from Afghanistan on Friday and meeting his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif was a good beginning.
"The visit was a necessary step and a goodwill gesture," Panak Ranjan Chakravarty, a former secretary in the external affairs ministry, told IANS.
General Ved Prakash Malik, a former Indian Army chief, agreed.
"It is an engagement strategy which will help to reach the end of our national interest. To that extent, it is a good move," the general said.
"I think it has created a conducive atmosphere for both India and Pakistan to move towards resolution of substantial issues."
Barring the Congress which questioned the suddenness of Modi's move, the Indian leader's two-hour halt in Lahore on his way home from Kabul has been widely welcomed.
Modi broke the ice by telephoning Sharif from Kabul on Friday to extend him birthday greetings.
Indian officials let it be known that Sharif had asked him to break his Kabul-Delhi journey in Lahore. Pakistani officials said Modi sought an invite -- and Sharif gave him one and proved a gracious host.
Modi then flew into Lahore, hugged Sharif, and the two leaders took a helicopter to Sharif's ancestral residence at Raiwind where they sipped Kashmiri tea and discussed confidence building issues.
A Pakistani report on Saturday said they discussed Kashmir too.
Gen. Malik said cross-border terrorism, border tensions and Jammu and Kashmir were the main issues plaguing India-Pakistan ties, which have seen ups and downs in recent years.
"Modi's visit to Lahore has created hope and it indicates his style of diplomacy," Malik told IANS.
Modi became the fourth Indian prime minister to visit Pakistan -- and the first in 11 years. Sharif came to New Delhi when Modi took oath last year.
Diplomatic expert C. Raja Mohan felt that after creating a diplomatic opening with Pakistan in recent weeks, Modi had decided to accelerate the pace of the engagement with Islamabad.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has not reacted to Modi's initiative but its leader Subramanian Swamy said Modi should have a free hand on Pakistan.
"Namo (Narendra Modi) be given a free hand since he is working to a strategy," he tweeted. "As PM, he must (be) allowed risky decisions since buck stops with him."
The greatest bouquets for Modi came from Jammu and Kashmir, which is at the heart of India-Pakistan tensions. India accuses Pakistan of supporting an ongoing separatist insurgency in the state.
"It is the right step in the right direction," Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed said from his hospital bed in Delhi where he is admitted. "It will definitely break the ice."
Former chief minister Omar Abdullah called it "a good step and a very welcome development" but said India and Pakistan must maintain consistency when they deal with one another.
Separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani said he had always favoured good relations between the two countries but insisted that the Kashmir dispute must be first resolved.
Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, Kashmir's chief cleric who heads the moderate separatist Hurriyat group, added: "It is a positive move, a good step and we should welcome easing of tensions between the two countries. But the basic issue of Kashmir will have to be resolved."
Kashmiris also saw a ray of hope in the Modi-Sharif embrace.
"We always believed Modi was a right wing politician. He has done something no other Indian prime minister ever did," Srinagar resident Abid Wani said.
Modi himself said after returning to New Delhi that he was touched by Sharif's decision to personally welcome him at Lahore airport -- and see him off.
Modi said Sharif touchingly recalled his interactions with former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the last Indian prime minister to go to Pakistan and who is now bed-ridden.
MODI'S IMPROMPTU LAHORE VISIT: WAS THE MEETING PRE-PLANNED?
The 'surprise visit' by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Pakistan on Nawaz Sharif's birthday was hailed as a diplomatic triumph everywhere.
But was the visit as impromptu as has been billed by Modi and his officials?
The presence of Indian steel tycoon Sajjan Jindal in Pakisan would seem to bely that. Jindal is said to have been instrumental in setting up another meeting between Modi and Sharif -- in November 2014 in Kathmandu during the SAARC summit.
Sajjan Jindal, brother of former Congress MP Naveen Jindal, has ties with prime minister Sharif's family.
He also has business relations with the Ittefaq Group of Industries, a Pakistani integrated steel producer with major operations in Punjab, which was founded by industrialist Muhammad Sharif, father of Nawaz Sharif.
Sajjan Jindal, in a tweet had announced his presence in Lahore. "In Lahore to greet PM Navaz Sharif on his birthday (sic)," the tweet had said.
Sajjan's JSW, and Naveen's Jindal Steel and Power Limited (JSPL) are part of a consortium led by state-owned SAIL, along with Monnet Ispat and AFISCO (Afghan Iron), which was keen to obtain from Pakistan 'right of way' to transport iron ore by road from Hajigak iron ore deposits in the Bamian, Afghanistan to Karachi. From the Pakistani port the ore was aimed to be shipped to western and southern parts of India.
As per an agreement between the India and Afghanistan in 2011, the Indian companies and AFISCO would construct a one-million-tonne-a-year steel mill and develop the 1.8-billion-tonne iron-ore reserves at Hajigak, which boasts of good quality ore with over 60 percent iron content.
The plan has been stuck for long because of Taliban control of the Hajigak area, which is about 140 km west of Kabul.
When Sharif came to India for the swearing in ceremony of the newly elected National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in May 2014, he had attended a tea party hosted by Jindal.
Sharif drew flak back home for attending the tea party, although this was largely ignored in India.
The Imran Khan party Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf said in a statement that going to a steel magnate's house for tea, when he couldn't find time to meet the Hurriyat leaders "reflected the misplaced priorities of Sharif."
According to an account in the book 'This Unquiet Land' by journalist Barkha Dutt, Sajjan Jindal was instrumental in fixing the Kathmandu meeting the two leaders from the sub-continent.
"On reaching Kathmandu, the prime minister (Modi) had called Sajjan Jindal and asked him to hop on to the earliest flight to Nepal. Jindal was asked to discreetly reach out to his 'friend' across the border. Subsequently, the two prime ministers were able to meet quietly in the privacy of Jindal's hotel room in Nepal, where they are said to have spent an hour together," the book says.
Foreign office officials, though, denied that any such meeting took place.
On Friday, following the meeting between the two leaders, Dutt tweeted: "Dear @MEAIndia, you denied my book's scoop on sajjanjindal as conduit for PMs meet in Nepal. Today he's in Lahore."
Foreign Office spokesman Vikas Swarup replied back in a tweet, calling it "another baseless story."
The Congress party had alluded to the arrangement by Jindal when it criticised Modi's Lahore stopover saying the visit was aimed at aiding a private business house.
"We are very clear that the prime minister is there to promote only private business interests and not India's national interest which should be supreme," Congress spokesman Anand Sharma had said.
But from all indications, the unprepared and unscripted meeting was hardly that.
