As encounters go between the leaders of India and Pakistan, the meeting in Russia between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Asif Ali Zardari — their first since last November’s Mumbai attacks — was a somewhat stolid affair.

It had none of the unscripted drama of the handshake famously offered by Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf to Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee when they met at a South Asian summit in Kathmandu in January 2002, while the two countries mobilised for war following an attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001. Musharraf’s gesture made little difference in a military stand-off which continued for another six months.

Nor did it carry the warmth of a summit meeting between Vajpayee and then prime minister Nawaz Sharif in Lahore in 1999, which raised high hopes of a breakthrough peace deal between India and Pakistan. Those hopes were dashed months later when the two countries fought a bitter conflict in the mountains above Kargil, on the Line of Control dividing disputed Kashmir.

But for all its absence of drama, or more precisely because of this, did the meeting between Singh and Zardari lay a more solid foundation for what is likely to be a long and difficult process of repairing relations? 

The two leaders stopped well short of resuming a formal peace process broken off by India following the Mumbai attacks, and Singh delivered a stern warning to Zardari that Pakistan must not allow militants to operate from its territory. “I am happy to meet you, but my mandate is to tell you that the territory of Pakistan must not be used for terrorism,” he told Zardari at a meeting on the sidelines of a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Yekaterinburg, in Russia.

But officials nonetheless held out the prospect of another meeting between Zardari and Singh at a summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Egypt in July and said that senior officials would hold further talks to exchange information on terrorism. Semantics aside, that means the two countries are talking again after a deep crisis in relations following the Mumbai attacks, although India has insisted it will not reopen the so-called composite dialogue peace process until Pakistan takes action against the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group it blames for the assault.

So where do they go from here?  Analysts see little hope for now of the two countries being able to pick up where they left off in a peace process which some say had nearly led to a breakthrough on Kashmir. 

But there is increasing debate about how the two countries might improve the way they engage with each other to get out of the on-again, off-again turbulent peace process which has failed to deliver a settlement in more than 60 years. 

And that is where the Yekaterinburg meeting — stolid, cautious and lacking in drama — might prove to be a turning point.

“Mr. Singh is trying to set out a coherent Pakistan policy,” former Indian ambassador G. Parthasarathy wrote in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. “To resume the formal dialogue process, careful preparatory work behind the scenes would be necessary.”

“As we learn from the recent past and look ahead, India must reconsider three core assumptions about the peace process. The first is the belief that we are negotiating with a coherent entity that is capable of making rational choices. Whether we should engage Pakistan or not is a question that makes sense only if treat our western neighbour as a black box,” wrote Indian strategic analyst C. Raja Mohan in the Indian Express.

“New Delhi must instead recognise the enormous internal divergence in Pakistan towards India and develop an approach that helps reasonable voices across the border prevail over the incurably hostile ones,” he wrote. ”In short, the very purpose of our engagement must be to produce a systemic change in Pakistan. It stands to reason then that we must not suspend the engagement every time India’s adversaries put up an obstacle.”

 Signs of a new and more methodical approach that might yield results for people in both countries seeking peace?  Or too slow and too cautious for Pakistan’s civilian government, which would like to see an early breakthrough to ease tensions on its eastern border as it tries to beat back Taliban militants on its western border with Afghanistan?

(Photos: President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajapayee shake hands in Kathmandu, January 2002; Vajpayee meets Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at Lahore summit in 1999; Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Asif Ali Zardari in Yekaterinburg, 2009)

Some readers have suggested that Pakistan’s politicians close ranks to beat back the Taliban advance, and that former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s party re-unites with the ruling coalition as a first step.

It is an idea that seems to be gaining traction, going by a spate of media reports  The Financial Times said that Sharif could consider joining a unity coalition led by President Asif Ali Zardari, citing a senior member of Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (Muslim).

It quoted the politician as saying that Sharif wanted to reassure foreign powers, especially the United States, he had no intention of trying to de-stabilise the year-old  government.

The reports come just before President Barack Obama sits down with Zardari and Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Washington for security talks and at a time when concern over Pakistan’s stability in the face of the Taliban gains has reached fever-pitch.

Pakistan’s Dawn said key western capitals seemed to be pushing, or at least, hoping for a reunion between Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party and Sharif’s group. The two could form a formidable alliance and send a powerful signal of a united face against the militancy, it said. The PML (N)’s popularity in the key province of Punjab - where many expect the next wave of militancy - and Sharif’s right-of-centre conservative credentials could help bolster the PPP in its battle with the militants.

But is Sharif going to take the bait? Dawn says it perhaps makes more sense politically for his party to watch from the sidelines while the Zardari government struggles with the militancy, deploys the military option and further loses public support.

And what of Sharif? Even if western capitals have discovered virtues in him in this hour of Pakistatan’s battle with militants, can the former premier long accused of sympathies for hardline Islamist groups really be seen as the choice of the West? Wouldn’ t that be the kiss of death even before he started out in the prevailing climate in Pakistan?

“Once in a position of authority or high office, Nawaz is certain to disavow U.S. support because identification with the U.S. in the present political climate is tantamount to political, and possibly actual, suicide for a Pakistani politician,” argues Nightwatch, an intelligence analysis website.

Now that President Asif Ali Zardari has agreed to reinstate Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and   offered to challenge a court decision against his rival Nawaz Sharif, is he going to come under pressure to give up his powers to dismiss parliament, another popular demand?

For many Pakistanis, that is the next stage in the rapid emasculation of Zardari’s presidency.  Article 58-2B of the constitution, which many blame for much of the country’s political instability, has several times been used to sack elected governments. Zardari had promised to ditch it but has yet to deliver.

“The next thing is to throw (out) 58-2B - it will fix the super power of president then,” was a post on microblogging site Twitter where activists, lawyers and ordinary people, caught up in the drama of the moment, shared information and pictures in real time. 

He has already lost his Information Minister. Sherry Rehman, a long-time confidante of his late wife Benazir Bhutto,  abruptly quit after the government temporarily blocked transmission of  the popular GEO news television channel.

Some other members of his party have been critical of his actions, deepening his isolation behind the presidential building in Islamabad where he increasingly has been cofined in recent weeks because of security concerns.

But as the Washiington Post reports it is the breakdown of his authority on the ground, especially in Punjab, that should worry him even more.

“As the demonstrations escalated in Lahore, police first responded with volleys of tear gas. But by mid-afternoon they suddenly withdrew from the streets, while numerous city and provincial officials were reported to have resigned. The swift collapse of authority signaled the end of Zardari’s bid to seize control of Punjab, the most politically influential region of the country, and raised serious questions about his ability to remain president.”

Some people thought the shift in power was already happening. Al Jazeera in its report noted that it was Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani who made the announcement to the nation  about the the decision to reinstate the chief judge.

Nawaz Sharif was also expected to meet Gilani at some point on Monday, and it is Gilani who is likely to reconcile any outstanding rifts within his party as a result of Zardari’s actions during the last few days, it said. “In short, Gilani is the man to watch.”

Zardari “is in a blind alley, completely isolated,” and may have to hand much of his power to Gilani as the price for remaining in office, said Rasul Bakhsh Rais, a politics professor at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, in this report here.

Is his loneliness complete or is this only one twist in a test of political nerves?

[Reuters photo of a protest in Lahore and  President Asif Ali Zardari]

Pakistan Army chief General Ashfaq Kayani is much talked about these days as the one national figure who could lean on Pakistan’s warring politicians to back down from a confrontation threatening the stability of the country. The question is over how he would intervene while maintaining a commitment to keep the army out of politics.

Most analysts have ruled out a coup for now and in an interview with PBS Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he believed Kayani was committed to a civilian government.

But between a military coup and non-intervention lies a huge grey area in terms of how far Kayani will, or can, go to put pressure on political rivals President Asif Ali Zardari and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif to back down.

In an editorial in The News, defence analyst Ikram Sehgal says that while negotiators shuttle back and forth between the two parties to try to find a compromise, “the ultimate answer for this political confrontation will probably emanate from Rawalpindi”, the headquarters of the Pakistan Army. “While the Army has no business running the government, will it be responsible and/or patriotic to stand by and see the government and the opposition run the country out of existence?” he asks.

Indeed a meeting between Kayani and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani on Wednesday raised speculation that the army chief may have already begun to put pressure on the government to find a compromise.

In an editorial in the Daily Times, Ejaz Haider writes that Kayani could try to get Gilani to convince Zardari that his current confrontation with Sharif has to stop.

“The army chief is a worried man, as he should be. His troops are spread thin. He is fighting against an elusive enemy; and he is fighting a war for which there is not much public acceptance,” he writes. “The irreducible minimum he needs is political stability because with stability comes the possibility of a popular buy-in for counter-insurgency.”

While ruling out a coup, he writes that “what Kayani can do is to try and get the prime minister to signal to Zardari that the current confrontation is not sustainable; that some compromise formula needs to be arrived at to defuse the situation. Of course, the ‘or else’ qualifier for greater effect would be welcome.”

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Maybe this always happens at times of national upheaval. But there is a surprising disconnect between the immediacy of the crisis facing Pakistan as expressed by Pakistani bloggers and the more slow-moving debate taking place in the outside world over the right strategy to adopt towards both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Reading Pakistani blogs since confrontation between the country’s two main political parties exploded and comparing them to international commentaries is a bit like watching men shout that their house is on fire, and then panning over to the fire station where the folks in charge are debating which type of water hose works best.

With lawyers and supporters of opposition leader Nawaz Sharif vowing to blockade parliament later this week over the refusal of President Asif Ali Zardari to reinstate fired judges, the country is steeling itself for violent street protests, which in turn could provide easy targets for suicide bombers seeking to add to the mayhem.  Sharif has talked about “a prelude to a revolution”, prompting the government to threaten him with charges of sedition.

Writing in Pak Tea House, a blogger who had insisted right up until February that Pakistan would turn out all right said this had been based on the assumption political parties would pull back from outright confrontation in the interests of the country. “I was wrong. And so faced with altered facts, I have changed my opinion. Pakistan is unraveling.”

The blog Changing up Pakistan makes the inevitable comparison with watching a car accident in slow motion, while a blogger at Deadpan Thoughts complains about March madness. “When policies are decided on the streets, things never come to a good end,” he writes.

Metroblogging Lahore carries a series of photos of protests in Lahore. Scroll down for his photo of a live mouse hanging from a protest board - the kind of tiny detail that stays with you perhaps more than the other images. “The little mouse was trembling and paying with its life for someone else’s crimes,” the photographer writes.

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In his book on the Pakistan Army, South Asia expert Stephen Cohen quotes a senior lieutenant-general as warning the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto against using the military to control political opposition. “If you use a stick too often, the stick will take over,” Cohen quotes the general as saying. “This has always been the history of the stick.”

There’s no sign yet of the Pakistan Army reverting to its usual role of wielding the big stick. But with the police out in force to quell protests in Punjab over a Supreme Court ruling excluding former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and his brother Shahbaz from office, the obvious question to ask is whether we are about to see a repeat of the old cycle in which security forces are called out to restore order and end up taking over altogether. Indeed, the Pakistan Army’s first involvement in politics is generally dated to the 1953 imposition of martial law in Lahore – where protests erupted on Thursday over the court ruling.  Sharif has blamed President Asif Ali Zardari, widower of the late Benazir Bhutto, for the ruling.

Historical parallels can, of course, be misleading.  Pakistan Army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, has made it clear he wants to keep the military out of politics. He is currently visiting the United States, where the administration of President Barack Obama has repeatedly stressed its commitment to civilian democracy in Pakistan.

And Zardari, who has imposed governor’s rule in Punjab to replace an administration run by Shabaz Sharif, may yet find an accommodation with the powerful Sharif brothers over the issues that divide them — the restoration of judges sacked by former president Pervez Musharraf along with Zardari’s retention of presidential powers he inherited when Musharraf quit last year. Or we might be set for a long period of political manoeuvring between Pakistan’s bickering politicians which drags on for weeks or months.

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The resignation of President Pervez Musharraf has, as expected, unleashed a new power struggle within Pakistan’s fractious coalition. Asif Ali Zardari, leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and widower of Benazir Bhutto, has staked a claim to the presidency, setting him on a collision course with former prime minister Nawaz Sharif. Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) sees Zardari’s candidacy as an attempt to garner more power and delay the restoration of judges sacked by Musharraf last November. PML (N) officials are already saying the row could break up the six-month-old coalition cobbled together after elections in February.

So will there be a fight to the finish between Zardari and Sharif that will drag Pakistan deeper into the mire? Or are the two men simply manoeuvring themselves into the best position they can find in the post-Musharraf era?

Indian writer M.J. Akbar says Zardari and Sharif, having set aside Musharraf, ”have begun the far more vicious process of trying to eliminate each other. This is a power-play in which there can be only one victor. Musharraf was the semi-finals. Islamabad is not a big enough town to find space for both Zardari and Sharif.

“The final resolution of this conflict will only come after another general election,” he writes. “In the meantime, the two will try to maximise their control over the instruments and institutions of state. Sharif has his sights on the Supreme Court, which has become the only reserve bank of credibility in a nation where the Constitution has been amenable to the doctrine of necessity — in simpler words, where the judiciary has legalised events rather than law being the determinant of fact. Zardari is more audacious, seeking the supreme office in the land, that of the President, since he is surely convinced that he will not get office through a popular vote.”

In an op-ed in the Daily Times, U.S.-based lawyer Rafia Zakaria bemoans the lack of leadership in Pakistan, creating what she calls a stagnant and elitist political system which is driving young talented Pakistanis abroad to join the thriving Pakistani diaspora. ”Politics in Pakistan, plagued as it is by political opportunism and expedience, has devolved to a level of absurdity where even Ms (Paris) Hilton would be a viable candidate for president,” she writes.

But is the current row the beginning of the end for Pakistan’s latest experiment in civilian democracy or its opposite — ie. evidence of a new and perhaps chaotic vigour in Pakistani politics as the country re-emerges from years of military rule?

Juan Cole in Informed Comment writes that “although the wrangling over who will be president is being reported in the U.S. press as a crisis, I don’t see it that way. It is, rather, an ordinary political process in which eventually there will be a winner who will garner enough votes to be elected. No one is brandishing a gun over all this to my knowledge. You might as well call the current presidential campaign in the U.S. to determine who will succeed George W. Bush a crisis.”

And leaving ideological debate aside, would Pakistan’s closest allies — China, Saudi Arabia and the United States — really be prepared to stand back and let the country descend into chaos?

Saudi Arabia, facing a challenge of its own from al Qaeda, has no interest in seeing it growing stronger in Pakistan, and may demand stability in return for its pledge to defer oil payments, as I wrote in a previous post. China has always called for a stable Pakistan, although like Saudi Arabia, it has been careful not to be seen to be interfering in its domestic politics. 

And the United States so badly needs Pakistan’s help in tackling the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan that it is likely to work hard to build a good relationship with whoever emerges as the strongest leader in Pakistan, including Zardari. According to the New York Times, doubts are growing among American officials over the level of cooperation they can expect from Pakistan Army chief Pervez Kayani “who has appeared less interested in how to deal with the Taliban than with the sagging morale of his undertrained, underequipped troops”. Sharif, the newspaper says, is seen as too close to conservative Islamic forces in Pakistan. ”To the surprise of many here, the civilian with the trump card, then, may be Mr. Zardari,” it says.

Winston Churchill famously noted: “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” Cause for optimism in Pakistan’s new civilian democracy? Or have the hopes raised by February’s elections been dashed?

Given how little many people in the west seem to know about Pakistan — at most that it has nuclear weapons and, possibly, Osama bin Laden; rarely that it has 165 million people (not too far off three times the population of Britain) with individual day-to-day challenges of earning a living and bringing up children like anywhere else – it’s encouraging to see the range of debate in the U.S. blogosphere after President Pervez Musharraf announced his resignation.

Here are just a few that caught my eye, in no particular order, and with apologies in advance to anyone I’ve mislabelled as U.S.-based:

Larisa Alexandrovna writes that Musharraf’s departure could lead to a “catch-22 of epic proportions” for the United States because of the threat of terrorism and the nuclear black market: “Forget the Russian-Georgian conflict for a moment. Forget Iraq for a moment. Forget everything for one moment and understand, that if Pakistan explodes into a power struggle, that struggle/conflict will be the match that lights a world war of epic proportions. A war that we are not equipped to deal with anymore,” she says.

The Punditburo agrees that Pakistan is “far more important than Iraq as far as the issue of terrorism and Al Qaeda go”  but draws a different conclusion: “Democracy managed to arise in Pakistan, even though the Bushies fought it tooth and nail, and failed to even embrace democracy even when it was clear that Musharraf had no future. This should be tonic for our arrogance.”

Sepia Mutiny highlights an article in counterpunch by Fatima Bhutto, the niece of the late Benazir Bhutto, from whom she was estranged. In it she attacks both Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif – who forced Musharraf to quit after their parties won elections in February.  ”We have options,” she says. “Zardari is not an option. Sharif is not an option. The army is not our one and only option. The mullahs have not become an option yet. There are close to 200 million of us: I’m sure we can think of something better.”

But it would be wrong to suggest that Musharraf’s departure for once overshadowed the U.S. presidential election. The Huffington Post used it to attack presidential candidate John McCain, arguing that he had been an “outspoken” supporter of the former army general.

A report in the Financial Times that Saudi Arabia has agreed in principle to defer payments for crude oil sales to Pakistan worth $5.9 billion has raised speculation about what it is looking for in return.

The Daily Times suggests that the Saudis are buying political stability in Pakistan, which may include throwing a lifeline to President Pervez Musharraf.  “Apparently, the immediate impact will be on PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif’s politics of confrontation with Musharraf, which will have to be diluted significantly in line with ground realities,” it says. ”The Saudis, like the Americans, want a stable transition to civilian rule and no confrontation between the politicians and the military, including Musharraf.”

The Saudis have no interest in seeing Pakistan descend into chaos, not least because this would further strengthen al Qaeda which has set its own sights on the kingdom’s rulers. It may also see Sunni-dominated Pakistan as a potential counterweight to Shi’ite Iran. So it would make sense for it to buy stability in Pakistan.

At the same time, Saudi Arabia is looking to use Pakistani farmland to grow grains  to protect itself from food shortages and rising prices, as indeed are other Gulf states.  So there may be an element of oil-for-food as well as oil-for-stability in the deal.

The  Daily Times adds a note of warning however in a subsequent editorial. It says Islamabad must also look to alternative sources of energy so that the Saudi bailout does not become “politically suspect”.

One to watch, with no doubt far more to come before this deal is fully played out.

Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi used an interesting choice of words when he talked to reporters in Paris about the new government’s relationship with President Pervez Musharraf.

Reuters Paris chief correspondent Crispian Balmer tells me that he said the ruling Pakistan People’s Party had established a working relationship with Musharraf after February elections in which the president’s political allies were defeated.

“The reason we have established that working relationship with him is to give stability,” he said. “We realise that this transition from dictatorship to democracy is a delicate transition and let’s not unnecessarily rock the boat.”

Those did not seem to be the words of a government that expects the embattled former army general to step down any time soon, despite a mass rally in Pakistan by lawyers fighting for the reinstatement of judges fired by Musharraf last year.

The Asia Times even suggests that the tide may be turning in favour of Musharraf after this week’s American air strike that killed 11 Pakistani soldiers near the border with Afghanistan. “… the US air strike has severely unsettled the country,” it says. “Musharraf, with his excellent rapport with Washington, is the man many see as the only person capable of preventing it from happening again.”

But even if he survives as president for now, many say his situation will become almost untenable when President George W. Bush, who prided himself on his personal relationship with Musharraf, leaves office next January. 

According to one comment on a blog I posted last month on Musharraf: “Given Pakistan’s history,  no ruler has survived more than a decade,  give or take a year or two. As Musharraf approaches the 10th anniversary of his coup against Nawaz Sharif next year, I think he is going to leave. But he’ll leave on his on own terms, not let the Sharif brothers hound him out.”