The Havana meeting has certainly removed, though for the time being, the chill in India and Pakistan's bilateral relations. Both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Pervez Musharraf had agreed to restart the peace process that has been stalled following the July 11 terrorist strikes in Mumbai. The apprehension regarding the breakdown of the composite dialogue process has ended.
The Ministry of Home Affairs in India is in a Catch-22 situation. In the last six months, at least seven Naxalite-affected states have written to it making an unusual demand: amend the Forest Conservation Act (FCA), 1980 to curb the spread of Naxalites. But the union home ministry mandarins are helpless: the Ministry of Environment and Forests, the nodal authority for the FCA, has refused to entertain any such demands.