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Musharraf invites Vajpayee : Early visit unlikely

	July 30, 2001

Pakistan has sent formal invitations to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh to visit Islamabad at their earliest convenient date for follow-up talks on the Agra summit. Separate letters by Gen. Musharraf to Mr. Vajpayee and by Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar, to Mr. Jaswant Singh, were delivered through the Pakistan High Commissioner in New Delhi. Mr. Ashraf Jahangir Qazi called on the Foreign Secretary, Ms Chokila Iyer, on July 27. While Mr. Vajpayee accepted, “in principle” the invitation orally extended by President Gen. Musharraf when he came to New Delhi, the Prime Minister is yet to take a decision whether to visit Islamabad and if so, when because the Government has come to the conclusion that Gen. Musharraf does not appear to be sincere in resolving the Kashmir issue and is rather playing up the centrality of the Kashmir issue to perpetuate and strengthen his own position at home. India may, however, test the ground by having a meeting of the Foreign Secretaries on the sidelines of the SAARC meeting in Colombo from August 6 to 9 and possibly by a visit by Mr. Jaswant Singh, to Islamabad ahead of the proposed meeting between Mr. Vajpayee and Gen. Musharraf in New York on the margins of the UN General Assembly session.

In his invitation letter, Gen. Musharraf thanked the hospitality extended to him and his wife during their visit to India and said though the Agra summit had failed to achieve a joint declaration, the two sides had agreed to continue the dialogue process to help resolve their differences on all issues, including Kashmir.

The Prime Minister, while making a statement in the Lok Sabha on July 23, confirmed that he had received an invitation from Gen. Musharraf to visit Pakistan but he did not show any enthusiasm for going to Islamabad in the near future.

In another development, responding to India’s charge that 45 Indian Prisoners of War were languishing in Pakistani jails since 1971 and that they should be released, Pakistan has said after scanning the jails it was found that there were no Indian PoWs. Gen. Musharraf had promised an investigation when the families of missing service men appealed to him to return their loved ones. Pakistan has, however offered to release 31 Indian prisoners held in its jails for illegally entering its north-west frontier Baluchistan province. Initially India had doubts about their Indian nationality saying they may have been Afghan Sikhs, but it has now expressed its readiness to accept 29 of them saying two women in the group were of Sri Lankan origin.

Meanwhile, although Pakistan official establishment has projected the visit of Mr. Vajpayee to Islamabad by the end of the year, besides a very busy schedule of the Prime Minister, there is no consensus within the Government whether Mr. Vajpayee after inviting Gen. Musharraf to visit India, should make the second mistake since Gen. Musharraf is not ready to accept the allegation of cross-border terrorism nor is it willing to compromise on the issue of Kashmir. So, when there is no meeting point between the two, what is the fun of Mr. Vajpayee allowing Gen. Musharraf to project some of his Cabinet colleagues as the hardliner bent upon wrecking any projected agreement on Kashmir.

The BJP National Executive at a meeting on July 28 adopted a resolution virtually ruling out any summit-level dialogue if Pakistan does not give up its jehadi agenda.

After the media-savvy Gen. Musharraf almost hijacked the Agra summit by such gimmicks as the breakfast meeting with Indian newsmen, parroted on the centrality of the Kashmir question, called the terrorists in Kashmir freedom fighters, compared them with Mukti Bahini of Bangladesh and the Palestinians fighting against Israel for a homeland and met the Hurriyat leadership in New Delhi against the wishes of Government of India, the Vajpayee Government wants a cooling off period. Government sources believe if Indo-Pak relations are to have a meaningful and forward looking content, the “give and take cannot be a one way street”. Pakistan must rein in the jehadi elements and stop cross-border terrorism”. The Government’s assessment that stability on the Line of Control will be disturbed along with a sudden spurt in terrorist violence by militant organizations aided and abetted by Pakistan in the wake of Gen. Musharraf returning home “empty handed” has not been misplaced. The self-anointed President of Pakistan came with the mistaken notion that “It is a win-win situation for him.” Gen. Musharraf had reportedly told the Pakistan media that Mr. Vajpayee had taken the initiative of inviting him for resuming the stalled dialogue because of the “sacrifices” made by the jehadis and intense western pressure especially from the Bush Administration in Washington. Mr. Vajpayee and his ministerial colleagues assisting him in Agra realized Gen. Musharraf’s gambit and decided to apply the brakes. Considering the irreconcilable differences between the two sides, government sources say, before a second summit meeting takes place, Pakistan has to appreciate that “flexibility and openness cannot be a one way street”.

The Government has realized that one of the reasons for failure of the Agra summit was the absence of a structured agenda for talks. When India had approached Islamabad for a meeting of the officials of the two countries to draw up the agenda, quick came the reply that there should not be a structured agenda and the two leaders should be free to raise any issue of concern to them. External Affairs Minister, Mr. Jaswant Singh, has disclosed after the collapse of the Agra summit that India had suggested pre-summit preparatory talks, but the idea was rejected by the Musharraf Government. New Delhi has hinted that now, as and when summit meeting takes place, there will have to be a written agenda so that the issues of concern are not drowned in Gen. Musharraf’s rhetoric on Kashmir.

If the Prime Minister goes by a top-secret Cabinet Secretariat report, he may not think of travelling to Islamabad. The ten-page report dated July 18, submitted to the Prime Minister said, India should first increase its bargaining position with Islamabad before entering into the next phase of dialogue. As of now, the report said, there is no change in Islamabad’s hardline attitude towards India. This is particularly so because Pakistan’s cross-border terrorism apparatus against India has gone into an overdrive after the Agra summit. The only alternative before India was to make Pakistan to bleed and at the same time take measures to improve political, administrative and military situation in Kashmir.

As seen from the attack on Amarnath pilgrims and the brutal killing of a group of Hindu villagers in the Doda district, Pakistan is not willing to rein in the Jehadis in order to vitiate the positive climate generated by the Agra summit in spite of their inability to sign a joint declaration. 13 persons, including six Amarnath pilgrims were killed as militants set off two improvised explosive devices and clashed with security forces at Sheshnag, 19 km from the holy cave shrine in South Kashmir on July 22. Again, the next day, 15 Hindus in Cherji village. On July 24 again, militants killed four of the seven village defence committee members who were kidnapped by them from Tagood village in Doda district. The Jehadi leaders like the chiefs of Lashkar-e-Toiba and Hizb-ul Mujahideen, have vowed to step up their terrorist attacks. Also for the first time since Pakistan announced “maximum restraint” on the Line of Control, there have been charges on both sides of heavy artillery firing.

As remarked by an Indian diplomat in Islamabad, if Pakistan is really serious in carrying forward the caravan of peace from Agra, the military establishment should send out a clear signal that it does not approve of mindless acts of violence irrespective of who is involved. Otherwise, how can we be expected to even considering picking up the threads from Agra.



PM briefing on summit talks

The Prime Minister, Mr. Vajpayee, has assured the Members of Parliament that he would never sign a document with Pakistan that does not address India’s concerns over cross-border terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir. In a statement in the Lok Sabha on Agra summit, the Prime Minister said, Pakistan’s refusal to end its support for cross-border terrorism was the main hurdle in the way of creating an atmosphere conducive for negotiations. Mr. Vajpayee said, insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir, helped by foreign mercenaries and generous assistance from abroad, could not be glorified as Jehad. It was terrorism, he said.

The Prime Minister confirmed reports that the efforts to draft a joint declaration at Agra fell through because of differences in perceptions over the Kashmir issue and cross-border terrorism. The two leaders had tried to put in place a framework for dialogue on all the issues addressed in the earlier composite dialogue process. Some of them were to be dealt with at the official level while others would be negotiated at ministerial and summit levels. “Eventually, however, we had to abandon the quest for a joint document mainly because of Pakistan’s insistence on the settlement of the Jammu and Kashmir issue as a pre-condition for the normalization of relations.” Mr. Vajpayee said, “Pakistan was reluctant to acknowledge and address cross-border terrorism. He and his colleagues were unanimously of the view that our basic principles could not be sacrificed for the sake of a joint document”, he declared. He said, during their extensive one-to-one talks, Musharraf focused almost exclusively on Jammu and Kashmir. Vajpayee, on the other hand, emphasized the importance of creating an atmosphere of trust for progress on all outstanding issues including Kashmir.

Talking to newsmen on July 22 the Prime Minister again stressed that Pakistan’s refusal at the Agra summit to allow any reference to India’s key concern on cross-border terrorism in Kashmir was a major reason for the breakdown of talks. Mr. Vajpayee who was confronted by newsmen after the Rashtriya Lok Dal leader, Mr. Ajit Singh, was sworn in as the Minister in the Vajpayee Government, listed several areas where the views of India and Pakistan remained significantly different and no compromise was possible. Significantly, unlike the Pakistani leaders who maintained that the two leaders were close to signing the joint declaration but an “invisible hand” [an hardliner in the Vajpayee Government] aborted the move, Mr. Vajpayee made it clear that at no point were the two leaders “ready to sign” any agreement. “No draft came before us”, he told newsmen, adding that it was only “discussed at the delegation level.” Mr. Vajpayee thus contradicted Gen. Musharraf’s claim that twice the two leaders had come close to signing a joint declaration. He mentioned that another factor which was responsible for collapse of the Agra summit was Pakistan’s insistence that there could be no normalization of bilateral relations until the Kashmir issue was resolved. That view was not in keeping with the Indian stance. Mr. Vajpayee also listed other areas where there were serious and irreconcilable differences in the viewpoints of the two countries: he insisted on the centrality of the Kashmir issue and he refused to accommodate India’s major concern on cross-border terrorism while insisting on describing this as a “freedom struggle”.

At yet another function, the BJP National Executive meeting on July 28, Mr. Vajpayee said, as a leader Pervez Musharraf lacked experience of politics, exposure to international diplomacy and did not quite understand the subcontinent’s history. At the party Executive meeting which adopted a resolution asking Mr. Vajpayee not to go to Pakistan unless Pakistan sheds its jehadi agenda, the Prime Minister said, Musharraf came as a soldier on an assignment and not as the President of Pakistan with a vision for the future. In a damning performance of the Pakistan Prime Minister, he said, “I knew on the first day itself that the summit will not be successful. He was quite clueless about our history, politics and rules of international diplomacy.” He had no perspective nor understanding of Indian politics or political leaders about the consensus in the country on Kashmir as an integral part o India and Pakistan’s role in cross-border terrorism. Mr. Vajpayee said, Musharraf was clearly unnerved when he reminded him of what lies at the core of the so-called core issue of Kashmir. Musharraf was left speechless when Mr. Vajpayee told him that the core issue was Pakistan’s illegitimate occupation of one-third of Jammu and Kashmir which began with an armed invasion by so-called tribals, along with Pakistani regulars in October, 1947.

Pakistan has, however, rejected the charge levelled by Prime Minister Vajpayee that Gen. Musharraf insisted on progress on the Kashmir issue as a pre-requisite for normalization of relations with India. Pakistan Foreign Office spokesman, Riaz Mohammad Khan said on July 26, all that Gen. Musharraf asked for was “tandem progress on all issues including Kashmir”.

Gen. Musharraf on the other hand, has said, India and Pakistan could not sign a joint declaration due to “split” in the ranks of the Indian Government. He told a joint meeting of the Cabinet and the National Security Council [NSC] a day after his return from Agra that hardliners in the Indian Government were to blame for the collapse of the summit. He told the meeting that both sides had come close to signing the Agra declaration but the Indians, particularly the hardliners, were not ready to give peace a chance. “It was apparent that there was a split in their ranks”, the Pakistan daily Dawn quoted him as saying. Gen. Musharraf, according to the daily, said Mr. Vajpayee definitely wanted the peace process to go on but the hardliners thwarted the signing of the declaration although eight out of nine items in the draft joint declaration had been agreed upon.

Gen. Musharraf quite obviously views himself as a forceful communicator of Pakistan’s national interest. During the Agra summit, his informal off-the-record breakfast meeting with senior Indian journalists was converted into a press conference that was televised by Pakistan. Gen. Musharraf conveyed the impression of being not only clear about what he wanted for his country from the Agra summit, but also unwilling to compromise on any substantive issue. He addressed yet another press conference in Islamabad on July 20 [covered last week], spending over two hours answering questions related to the Agra summit and Indo-Pak relations. On the face of it, Gen. Musharraf’s manner and some of his remarks seemed conciliatory. In the prepared text, he claimed he was speaking not just to the people of Pakistan but also to the people of India and Kashmir. And he made the right noises and made some clinched, but politically correct, points. He praised Mr. Vajpayee and Mr. Jaswant Singh for their open-mindedness and the people of India and its government for the goodwill that was generated. He would not hear a word said against the Indian Prime Minister or even the Home Minister. Similarly, he firmly put down the suggestion that there were hawks only on the Indian side. “There are hawks here too” was his gentle reminder. Unlike most Pakistani politicians, he even argued that third-party mediation is not necessary at this stage and could only become essential if India and Pakistan, despite being responsible States, were not able to find a way out.

However, beyond these superficial gestures, the real agenda of Gen. Musharraf came through very clearly. Three issues deserve particular emphasis. First, Gen. Musharraf quite clearly believes that Kashmir is the centre of the India-Pakistan conflict and peace cannot be established without a resolution of the “Kashmir dispute.” Secondly, he seems to be clear that the introduction of confidence-building measures in other areas, in the absence of a settlement on Kashmir, is meaningless. Finally, the General is unwilling to view India’s core concern of cross-border terrorism with any great sympathy or sensitivity. What was outrageous was his suggestion that cross-border terrorism was an indigenous freedom struggle. His another strange interpretation was that violence in Kashmir cannot be called cross-border terrorism because it is concerned only across the Line of Control or LoC and not across the international border dividing India and Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir. Since Kashmir is a disputed territory and since there is no border but only a Line of Control, where is the question of cross-border terrorism, was his strange explanation.

Ironically, while many within India were willing to accept him initially as a plainspeaking General who was seriously interested in a breakthrough, scepticism is growing after the latest interaction with the media. Gen. Musharraf tends to believe that after the nuclearisation of South Asia, the USA and some other Western countries would put pressure on India to reach an agreement with Pakistan on its terms. Pakistan may have been encouraged after the NATO and the US intervention on the side of ethnic Albanian Muslims in Serbia and now the EU and US mediation to resolve the differences between the Macedonian Government and the Albanian Muslim minority. The remarks of President Bush in Kosovo last week while visiting US troops deployed there that from Kosovo to Kashmir and from Middle East to Northern Ireland, his Government will work with NATO allies “to promote freedom and tolerance” may have further encouraged Gen. Musharraf. But, the ground reality is that today no world power will go along with the “clash of civilizations thesis”. From the US and China to Russia and even the European Union, each is a multi-religious entity opposed to ethnic divisions of countries. This might also explain why the General is no longer keen on a third party mediation.

The Indian position on Kashmir rests on two premises. One, the unquestionable legality of Kashmir’s accession to India. And two, Kashmir’s symbolic relevance to India’s necessarily secular identity, of its core belief in pluralist existence. The loss of Kashmir will mean the negation of the fundamental values which India’s founding fathers enshrined in the Constitution.



Agra summit post-mortem

Now that the dust of the Agra summit is settling down fast, political pundits in both countries are busy with a post-mortem of the one of the biggest media events in the Indian sub-continent. As it is, the summit, with all its initial promise, ended with a whimper. Both parties had to leave Agra empty-handed without any common declaration or even a joint statement. the two leaders were on the verge of signing a common document twice, but the process was abandoned abruptly at the last minute for some unknown reason.

Under the circumstances, one apprehended that Indo-Pak relationship was going to suffer another wintry spell. One was tempted to conclude that the old bitterness and rancour would be revived to eat away the possibility of any rapprochement between the two neighbours. But, post-summit reactions of leaders across the border, their restraint and even the subtle tone of the blame game point otherwise. Both sides have, it appears, realized that they can ill-afford to lose this chance for a settlement of mutual disputes. The demand of American geopolitics, being incompatible with the failure of the summit, would not allow them that luxury. Thus, the summit may remain inconclusive, but it cannot be called an abject failure yet. Both the Foreign Ministers have said that the talks have not failed and that the caravan of peace will go on and they will pick up the threads when Mr. Vajpayee and Mr. Jaswant Singh visit Islamabad.

Enumerating the Indian follies, A.N. Dhar, a well-known political commentator says, one regret is that India made no preparations. It succumbed to the Pakistani assertion that the two Heads of delegation should so straight into the talks without an agenda or a structure for the talks. Mr. Jaswant Singh is on record as having said that India had been pleading with Pakistan to let it send a delegation of officials to that country to draft an agenda or generally decide what should be discussed. Mr. Dhar says, the question is why India allowed itself to be led by Pakistan in this regard. Why did not New Delhi pursue the idea with Islamabad? Why be led by Pakistan? This was the first point of surrender. Secondly, how disastrous was the Indian surrender was known when President Musharraf made the centrality of Kashmir the centrepiece of his discussion. The breakfast conference of President Musharraf was, from the Pakistani point of view, the media coup, the finest performance of the summit. He emerged as a master performer. As the Jang newspaper of Pakistan said, “he entered the lion’s den and emerged with his audience purring like pussycat”.

After it was surprised by the breakfast broadcast, India obviously did not know how to counter it. Typically, officials looked into the files and miraculously came upon the opening statement of Mr. Vajpayee at the summit a day earlier. By itself a very good statement but the Indians did not seem to know that it was something which had been made out 24 hours earlier. And moreover, it had by then been overtaken by what President Musharraf had said at the breakfast.

The summit was held at India’s initiative and expense, but New Delhi came out poorer. Says Brahma Chellaney, an expert on strategic affairs, India closed its eyes to reality, shut its ears to the pre-summit messages from Islamabad and stayed mute to Pakistan’s propaganda war. The expectations and calculations that prompted Vajpayee and his team to make a dramatic U-turn in Pakistan policy and invite the military dictator proved wrong. New Delhi over-estimated several factors and underrated others. The summit meeting foundered not on differences over intricate elements of any breakthrough in the works, but on the same old conceptual divergence on how to proceed even towards mending bilateral relations. When India made its famous somersault on Pakistan policy in May, it obviously did not anticipate that its summit initiative would get mired in trite, abstract questions or that it would get beaten at its own game.

From the time Vajpayee invited Musharraf to “walk the high road” with him, Pakistan virtually hijacked the Indian initiative, milking it to improve its tattered image, build international legitimacy for its military regime and refocus global attention on Kashmir. Musharraf, practising diplomacy through the media in the style of wartime public relations, sent out, day after day, blunt messages on his summit objectives. Musharraf, the commando by training, brought that style and substance with him to India. He dominated the media side of the summit, tried to get the better of India in the negotiations and when India did not wilt, returned home triumphantly having publicly set the agenda. He wanted a joint declaration only on his terms, as he did not want to meet the fate of Pakistani rulers who set in motion a process for their ouster after signing agreements with India at Tashkent, Simla and Lahore.

Risk, stealth and surprise are essential to a commando and Musharraf personifies those qualities. The Musharraf breakfast show, televised at the delicate halfway summit point, was the work of a commando mind. That his Indian guests at the breakfast discussion had not been told about the telecast was immaterial to Musharraf because ethics have no place in commando tactics. New Delhi is crying foul. But when it extended its invitation, asks Brahma Chellaney, how did it expect a rogue General to play by the Marquess of Queensberry rules of diplomacy? Agra was testament to how the wily Musharraf who trained Naga insurgents in the Chittagong hills before 1971 and played a key role in Sikh militancy, Kargil, Indian Airlines hijacking to Kandahar and Kashmir terrorism and swore to avenge dismemberment of his country by India in 1971, outmanoeuvred and outfoxed India by blending diplomacy and commando tactics. Musharraf stole India’s initiative to articulate Pakistan’s case forcefully and present himself as reasonable and personable. Political observers say, it must be embarrassing for Mr. Vajpayee that after Lahore bus diplomacy, he has again been taken for a ride, this time on his home turf by the guest he invited. For a Prime Minister in the twilight of his career, Agra constituted virtually a last-ditch effort to fashion a foreign policy legacy on the ruins of his earlier initiatives.

The paradox is that despite a failing economy, Pakistan has strengthened its only leverage over India - its ability to bleed its rival by cheaply sending arms and extremists into Kashmir. That is Islamabad’s most powerful weapon against India. As its economic and military disparity with India widens, Pakistan will need that weapon even more.

According to former Chief Justice, V.R. Krishna Iyer, dealing with Gen. Musharraf has many implications. First his credentials are military authority and governance by the gun. If he could tell his country that the constitution hardly counts and he was the one who could rule the people, how can we put trust in his word since his authority is not based on the constitution but on a tour de force. The one-to-one deal, therefore, means one billion Indians through their surrogate, Mr. Vajpayee, and one military President, indifferent to the democracy of his country, being in office ultra virus. His candour, pleasant manners and willingness to make a pilgrimage to Rajghat impressed everyone. At a personal level, he excelled in charming behaviour and outspoken expression, but weighed in the scale of political principles, one wonders how far he and Mr. Vajpayee can travel together on the perilous Indo-Pak path.

Gen. Musharraf’s obsessive insistence on Kashmir in Agra betrayed a mind warped by religious terrorism. Musharraf represents the changing face of Islamic fundamentalism. Gone are the days when Islamic terrorists would sport flowing, unkempt beard, wear huge headbands and speak in Pushtu or Urdu or any other Middle Eastern language. Musharraf’s popularity amongst the various terrorist and fundamentalist groups operating from Pakistan stems from this factor. Musharraf has been a blue-eyed General of the fundamentalist forces. Or else he would never have been able to overthrow Nawaz Sharif and then consolidate his power. He is, therefore, beholden to them. That is the reason he chose to protect the interests of these subversive groups when the US began pressing him to rein in fundamentalist and terrorist organizations. He invited them for a secret meeting and sought their help in projecting a politically correct image of a liberal leader to the western world. The terrorist groups wholeheartedly supported his cause and became less overt thereafter. He in turn allowed them to recruit youngsters, collect funds and run training camps as ever, a bit discreetly.

It was no surprise that before emplaning for New Delhi, Musharraf called leaders of various religious, fundamentalist and terrorist groups to seek their advice on what to talk at the Agra summit. They cautioned him against compromise on the issue of Kashmir. A veteran expert on Indo-Pak affairs, Cecil Victor says, it would be the height of a folly for Indians to act on the promise that if Gen. Musharraf is unable to come to terms with India on the basis of equity he would be overthrown by a military dictatorship more steeped in Islamic fundamentalism that is Musharraf and it would be worse for India. The unvarnished fact is, says Cecil Victor, that Gen. Musharraf has been one of the architects of the Pakistani policy of creating, training and leading the fundamentalist Taliban to pursue the goal of “strategic depth” in Afghanistan. He believes that the same tactics applied to Jammu and Kashmir will garner him similar results. So confident is he of the success of a policy by which he has waged a proxy war in Jammu and Kashmir that he believes that it is time to pluck a fruit that is ripe for the picking.

Prime Minister Vajpayee was constrained to disabuse Gen. Musharraf of the perception under which the Pakistan arm and the jihadis are operating in Jammu and Kashmir that India is being bled by their activities. He said it in no uncertain terms that India is quite capable of dealing with any situation. Gen. Musharraf is in danger of falling foul of the Islamic fundamentalists at home, that is his funeral. India is suffering the consequences of the proxy war being conducted by Pakistan and if the new round of summit dialogue is to take place, Gen. Musharraf must not hide his backing to the terrorists in the guise of their being freedom fighters.

As remarked by P.R. Chari, Director, Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, New Delhi, three lessons can be drawn from the failed summit at Agra if the next summit in Islamabad, [if it is held at all since it will be linked by India to Pakistan ending its support to cross-border terrorism], is to be successful. First, an agenda was required if substantive issues were to be discussed. In its absence, it is predictable that the meeting would be infructuous. It bears mention that the agenda, which fructified into the Shimla Agreement of July 2, 1972, was finalized in a preliminary meeting held in Murree near Islamabad, in April that year when D.P. Dhar, Chairman of the Policy Planning Division and Aziz Ahmed, Secretary General in Pakistan’s Foreign Affairs Ministry drew up the draft agendas which were exchanged and discussed in Murree. Priorities were laid down and convergences and divergences of views identified. This made the Shimla Agreement earlier to negotiate. Apparently, India’s efforts to persuade Pakistan to discuss an agenda at Agra did not succeed. In its absence, the negotiations were less than useful. Second, empirical evidence suggests that successful negotiations between adversarial States have relied on gradualism and not on achieving spectacular results. Indeed, wisdom decrees that partial progress on some issues is more fruitful than linking all disputed issues to one central question and risking complete failure. Pakistan hinged the Agra meeting on Kashmir; this foredoomed the summit to failure since no adequate foundation had been laid for reaching a modus vivendi. Third, the need for reticence in speech and action during the negotiations cannot be over-emphasised. Hence, using the media to convey messages to the negotiating teams was juvenile. Ms Sushma Swaraj’s omission of Kashmir among the issues discussed and Gen. Musharraf’s use of intemperate language in his breakfast meeting with the media ruined the atmospherics surrounding the summit.

There are, however, two major reasons why negotiations are unavoidable. First, the reciprocal Indo-pak nuclear explosions in May, 1998 have introduced an altogether new factor into their relationship. Nuclear deterrence rests on a mixture of accommodation and reassurance, besides the threat of condign punishment. A dialogue is necessary consequently to convey this accommodation and reassurance. Second, the compulsions that led India and Pakistan to reach Agra have not disappeared. They comprised American pressure to initiate bilateral talks on issues including Kashmir. Pakistan’s increasing economic distress, the need for the NDA Government to divert attention from its recurring failure of governance, and the reality that Pakistan and India’s respective Kashmir policies are going nowhere. Indeed, Pakistan’s support to cross-border terrorism has beggared its economy and isolated it within the international system. India’s investment of blood and treasure in Kashmir has also not yielded any positive solution. But, political observers say, before the dialogue resumes, India and Pakistan should usefully introspect on the reasons underlying the Agra summit’s failure and derive appropriate lessons from their own existence.



Powell’s disappointment - Rocca assurance against intervention

The United States, which is reported to have used its influence to nudge India and Pakistan to hold summit-level dialogue, is not happy with the failure of the Agra summit although it has conceded that 50 years of animosity could not have ended in two days of talks. The US Assistant Secretary of State, Ms Christina Rocca, who came to New Delhi on a three-day visit, in his talks with External Affairs Minister, Mr. Jaswant Singh, on July 23, told him that too much should not be read into the remarks of the Secretary General, Colin Powell, expressing his disappointment at the collapse of the Agra summit. She said there is no change in the policy of the United States that the Kashmir dispute should be resolved bilaterally taking into account wishes of the people of Kashmir. The US would step in only if both the parties to the dispute seek its good offices.

Together with Mr. Powell, President Bush tagged Kashmir with Kosovo where ethnic Albanian Muslims are demanding a separate homeland accusing the Yugoslav Government of discrimination against the Muslim minority. Mr. Bush said, from Kosovo to Kashmir, the US will work with NATO allies for promoting freedom and tolerance. India’s reaction, however, was quite measured saying it is natural for two big democracies to differ.

In what appeared to be an off-the-cuff remark at a State Department briefing on July 22, Colin Powell expressed “disappointment” that the Agra did not produce “as much progress or did not have the success we might have hoped.” “We will do everything we can to lend our good offices to the improvement of relations between the two countries and the difficult outstanding issues, whether it is Kashmir or nuclear [weapons”, Mr. Powell said. “So, you will see us deeply engaged in the region”, he said.

However, subsequently, US officials immediately cautioned against reading too much into the remark, saying Powell was reiterating the familiar US position with the underlying caveat that Washington would step in only if both parties invited.

Similarly, President Bush, who was addressing US troops at Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo on July 25 in the course of his European tour last week, said his Government together with its NATO allies, “will pursue a world of tolerance and freedom.” He said: “From Kosovo to Kashmir, from the Middle East to Northern Ireland, freedom and tolerance is the defining issue for our world.”

New Delhi’s normal reaction would have been scathing attack on US President’s remarks. But, the Foreign Office spokeswoman tried to play down his remarks saying “As mature democracies, India and US can have different points of view on an issue.”

US officials later explained that President Bush’s off-hand mention of Kashmir in a speech to American troops in Kosovo was no more than an alliterative reference espousing US global values and held no special meaning on message to India and Pakistan. “It was intended to be a global message without any specific reference to a region or a country”, State Department officials explained.

After the first flush of indignation, Indian officials are also finding the speech quite to their liking since the whole Kashmir issue as seen by the militants and its Pakistani backers is premised on narrow religious fundamentalism and ethnic hatred. Bush’s speech, in fact, is a throwback to one made by his father almost a decade ago in which he said, the US would not support those “who seek independence in order to replace a far off tyranny with local despotism.” In what came to be known later as the Chicken Kiev speech, the elder Bush had told the Ukrainian legislature: “Freedom is not the same as independence. Americans will not support those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred,” he said.

The remarks of Mr. Colin Powell and President Bush came as Assistant Secretary of State, Ms Christina Rocca was in the middle of her visit to India, Pakistan and Nepal. Confronted by External Affairs Jaswant Singh and Prime Minister’s Principal Secretary Brajesh Mishra during talks in New Delhi on July 23, Ms Rocca clarified that there is no change in the US official position regarding the Indo-Pak dialogue. She reiterated that the US would play a role only if it was desired by both countries. She told the Indian leaders that the US position remains unchanged. It has not undergone a shift with the statement of Mr. Powell, she said.

While expressing satisfaction at the reiteration of the US stand that India and Pakistan must engage bilaterally and it would not mediate unless its good offices are sought by both sides, the Foreign Office has thought it fit to officially reject the US offer of good offices. Foreign Office spokesperson said on July 23 that all outstanding differences with Pakistan have to be resolved bilaterally and the US is aware of India’s position.

Talking to newsmen after talks with Indian leaders, Ms Rocca said on July 24 that the US has no role to play in Jammu and Kashmir which needed to be resolved by India and Pakistan through bilateral dialogue involving Kashmiri people. She said, “Our position on Kashmir is consistent. It should not be involved. We are hopeful of continuing dialogue between India and Pakistan for the resolution of the issue.” She also extended strong support to the continuation of the peace process between India and Pakistan and called the recent Agra summit as a step forward in their bilateral relations. On the inability of the two leaders to produce a joint statement at Agra, Ms Rocca said, it will take “more than three days to overcome 50 years of mistrust.”

The US reiteration of its preference for a bilateral route to resolve the Indo-Pakistan dispute over Kashmir, is sure to disappoint Pakistan which feels that in view of the steadily growing intimate relations between India and the US, Washington is not inclined to antagonize India. However, the Pakistan Foreign Minister, Abdul Sattar, has said the improving relations between the US and India was of no concern to Pakistan as long as it did not go in conflict or act against Islamabad’s interests. In an interview with the CNN, Mr. Sattar said, India and the US are welcome to have friendly relations. “Our concern arises only if and when the US seeks to improve relations with India at the expense of Pakistan’s interests.



Pak escaped from being labelled terrorist State

Meanwhile, according to a just published book on US-Pakistan relations, Pakistan came within an inch of being labelled by the US as a State sponsor of terrorism but escaped by giving assurances which it promptly broke. A former senior US diplomat and ex-ambassador, Dennis Kux, who earlier wrote a highly acclaimed book on Indo-US relations under the titled “Estranged Democracies”, said in his latest book that instead of closing down the cross-border terrorist apparatus, Pakistan merely moved many of the Kashmir-bound terrorists to Afghanistan, changed the ISI chief and “privatised” the cross-border terrorism with continued ISI help.

The Book said, in the waning days of the administration of President in 1993, Washington was disturbed by the realization that Pakistan was harbouring hundreds of young Islamic extremists, graduates of guerilla training camps set up during the Afghan war and located near Peshawar or just over the order in Afghanistan. The camps had become breeding grounds for a generation of militant fundamentalists who not only fought the Communists in Afghanistan and the Indians in Kashmir, but maintained close links with terrorists throughout the Islamic world. In April, 1993, the then Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, worried by the possibility that Pakistan might end up on the terrorist list, sent the Secretary General of the Foreign Ministry, Akram Zaki, to assure the Americans that he would put the lid on the extremists. to back up his assurance, Sharif cracked down on Arab extremists within Pakistan, although many of them shifted their base across the border into Afghanistan. He replaced ISI Director General Lt.Gen. Javed Nasir, a maverick identified with religious extremists and a strong supporter of ISI involvement in Kashmir. Direct ISI support for the insurgents tapered off, but retired military intelligence personnel and Afghan Mujahideen working through the Jamaat-i-Islami and other extremist groups having close ties with the ISI provided “privatised” help to the Kashmiri dissidents. l