While voting for the continuity of the outgoing Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee government's policy towards Pakistan, Congress party has called for "modification" and "re-engineering" of the dialogue process. 
Speaking at the launch of the fourth issue of the South Asian Journal dedicated to trade and cooperation amongst South Asian nations, Senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Iyer gave glimpses of the likely changes in the Pakistan policy of the new government. Iyer, who himself got elected to Lok Sabha second time from Tamil Nadu is also Sonia Gandhi's aide on foreign affairs. 
He said the new government would intend to "re-engineer" the peace process to make it more vigorous and practicable. He said the new set up would identify what actually both sides are aiming at. Given the past experience, he said, endeavour should be to make the dialogue process "uninterruptible". 
Drawing parallels between talks held by Vietnamese leaders with the Americans at the height of war and the India-Pakistan dialogue process, Iyer said, both countries should learn to keep official channels open and not link them with the cessation of hostilities or terrorism. 
He also advocated for an "integrated" dialogue process, where all issues are taken up by the foreign secretaries themselves and not by the secretaries or the experts representing respective departments. "The segmented dialogue taken up by the officials lead us nowhere as they go on repeating their respective hardened positions," he said. 
He also called for taking the dialogue process beyond the domain of foreign secretaries. Iyer, who is himself going to influence next government's Pakistan policy said, he believed that both countries should nominate a single interlocutor preferably from political background to lead the dialogue process rather to hand it over to officials. 
He also advocated for full media coverage to each other's position on disputed issues so that public in both courtiers get at the bottom of other country's position. This, he said, would create a public awareness and make solutions easier. 
Earlier while launching the journal brought out by the South Asian Free Media Association (SAFMA), former Prime Minister I. K. Gujaral asked both countries to seek cooperation in social and health issues. He said he was worried at the recent report in the Economist that this region will soon surpass African in terms of AIDS patients. He said India and Pakistan should sit together to ponder over this menace.