Pakistan, June 28 -- "Our eastern neighbour, having suffered a humiliating defeat in the conflict in May last year, has increasingly resorted to covert tactics and the use of proxies in an attempt to undermine the hard-earned peace and stability in our country." Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was not preaching to the choir at the Pakistan Naval Academy. His warning, thus, served as a reminder that the subcontinent's temperature is rising even when the guns are silent.

There are, once again, rumours of efforts to break the ice between Islamabad and New Delhi. Whether Track 2 or Track 1.5, any development that promises even a modest lowering of temperatures between the two nuclear neighbours deserves to be taken seriously. Yet the test of a...