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Musharraf visit countdown : Row over Hurriyat invitation

	July 09, 2001

Pakistan has been shifting its stand on the Hurriyat as it copes with internal pressures. With less than a week to go for the Agra summit, Pakistan suddenly stepped up its anti-India rhetoric and gone back on its word that it will not go against the wishes of Government of India to meet the Hurriyat delegation at the tea-party to be hosted by the Pakistan High Commissioner, Ashraf Jahangir Qazi, at his residence, on July 14. General Musharraf faxed a letter to the Hurriyat chief, Abdul Ghani Bhat, expressing a desire to meet the Hurriyat leaders during his stay in India. The letter was faced just a day after some Pakistani newspapers quoting senior Pakistani officials said on July 1 that the controversy over the issue had been settled and Islamabad has agreed to India’s request that Musharraf would not meet the Hurriyat leaders.

Later, in an apparent softening of stand, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf on July 7 said his meeting with Hurriyat leaders depended on India as it seemed to be a little “hesitant” for such a meet. “We have invited Hurriyat leaders to a reception of the High Commissioner on the evening of July 14. It depends on the Indian authorities whether they permit them to meet me or not,” Gen. Musharraf said. About the impact of the Indian decision not to allow the Hurriyat leaders to meet him, Musharraf told a group of mediapersons in Islamabad: “Initially it may not impact that seriously because the important issue is the Indian acceptance of this core issue of Kashmir and sincere desire of moving forward. However, no progress is really possible without the participation of the Kashmiri leaders”.

Cautious South Block officials in New Delhi were trying to prepare themselves for a last-minute surprise if Pakistan indeed insisted on a meeting with the Kashmiri leaders, and this is what happened when the Hurriyat Conference Chairman, Mr. Abdul Gani Bhat released a letter by Gen. Musharraf dated July 2 in which he expressed a desire to meet the Kashmiri leaders during his stay in India.

Confirming the decision to facilitate a “photo-op” between the Hurriyat leaders and Gen Musharraf in New Delhi, a Pakistan Foreign Office spokesman tried to explain the rationale behind the move. The spokesman said, “It is well established that the APHC is the true voice of the Kashmiris and Kashmiris would have to be involved in the consultations or a process of resolution of Kashmir issue.”

Releasing the letter, Mr. Bhat said the earlier reports about Gen. Musharraf declining to meet the Hurriyat leaders were media-generated and confusing. He said, he intended to meet the Pakistan President outside the summit framework and hoped that the Indian authorities would allow the Hurriyat leaders to interact with Musharraf at any convenient time.

Gen. Musharraf’s letter was in response to the Hurriyat’s June 22 letters to the Pakistan President and Prime Minister Vajpayee seeking an audience with them when they meet in Agra. New Delhi had rejected the Hurriyat request and asked Gen. Musharraf on June 28 not to meet its leaders. The Central Government, which does not recognize the Hurriyat Conference and views any such meeting as an attempt to push towards a trilateral dialogue, preferred not to reply. Gen. Musharraf too had publicly said that he would not infringe protocol. At that time, the Hurriyat had seemed to be marginalised. Now, the Hurriyat Chairman says that despite India’s shrill opposition, Hurriyat is confident of meeting the General.

India’s reaction to Musharraf’s letter was on predictable lines. “We have always maintained that this is a non-issue”, Foreign Office spokeswoman, Nirupama Rao told reporters on July 5. She said, Pakistan was aware of India’s position on the issue. New Delhi believes the Hurriyat has no role in bilateral matters between India and Pakistan. However, in an indication that Gen. Musharraf’s controversial decision would not come in the way of the talks, Ms Rao said, India “will be working seriously to make the summit a success and we hope that the other side will do the same”.

The Pakistan High Commissioner in India, Ashraf Jahangir Qazi, at a meeting with the Foreign Secretary, Ms Chokila Iyer, on July 6 tried to play down the issue. To assuage Indian concerns, he said, Gen. Musharraf’s meeting with Hurriyat leadership would be “informal and not a structured exchange”. He said, the Hurriyat leaders would only be invited for the reception where others would be present too. He ruled out a Hurriyat-Musharraf one-to-one meeting and said they would merely be introduced to him. The Pakistani explanation, however, did not appear convincing to the External Affairs Ministry. Government sources said, Mr. Qazi was told categorically that Gen. Musharraf’s invitation to Hurriyat went against the grain of an amicable pre-summit build-up.

Senior officials in South Block view Gen. Musharraf’s letter as an attempt to placate his domestic constituency. It is also to reassure the Hurriyat that he has not abandoned their cause. Having built the Hurriyat as the only representative body of Kashmiris, Pakistan cannot afford to be seen as backing out of its commitment for the cause of the APHC, remarked a western diplomat. After all, Pakistan has invested a lot in the Hurriyat and cannot be seen as dumping the combine, according to an official. The bilateralism implied in the Vajpayee-Musharraf summit has already invoked widespread ridicule for the Hurriyat and its pretensions of being the “third party” in the Valley’s Urdu press. The conglomerate has been virtually begging Islamabad for some kind of face-saving gesture, according to the officials.

As remarked by political analyst Seema Mustafa, now that Pakistan is bent upon going ahead with the Musharraf-Hurriyat meeting, India has just two choices now: To either swallow the earlier objections and look the other way or to hope up the reaction and endanger the summit. They say, for a variety of reasons,Gen. Musharraf has no choice but to meet with the Hurriyat. One, if he does not even make this little gesture and is also unable to take back enough from Agra to convince the hardliners at home that he is on the right track insofar as Kashmir is concerned, they will all be baying for his blood. Two, the Hurriyat is very relevant for Pakistan in Kashmir and the General who obviously has long term plans, cannot afford to alienate them. APHC speaks for Pakistan. There are several leaders within who are very pliable, and why should Gen. Musharraf who is looking for a settlement of Kashmir give up the one influential group that he has some control over in the Valley? and that too a time tested and trusted group of leaders. Surely, he is not stupid. Third, he cannot appear to concede to India everything he claims to stand for. He is aware that the Jehadi groups and organisations like the Jamaat-e-Islami are biding time. That they are waiting for him to slip so that they can step in. And that by alienating the Hurriyat at this stage he will be handing them a broom to hit him with, even as he loses the APHC support in Kashmir. Gen. Musharraf cannot put all his eggs in India’s basket and has made it clear through his letter to the APHC chairman, Prof. Abdul Ghani Bhat that he is not prepared to either.

However, in New Delhi’s calculations, the Hurriyat does not deserve any consideration after it turned out the K.C. Pant mission, particularly when the Centre’s designated interlocutor had singled it out for a special mention. New Delhi is not going to allow the APHC to advance its claim of being the sole representative of the people of Jammu and Kashmir.



Repression charge

Side by side with indicating to go defy the Indian request not to meet the Hurriyat leaders, in a statement which caught New Delhi by surprise, the Pakistan Foreign Office in a sharply-worded statement accused the Indian force of stepping up acts of “repression and oppression” in the Kashmir Valley. In a statement on July 6, the Pakistan Foreign Office urged the Indian Government to stop its “repression” there. Indian Foreign Office strongly denied Pakistani allegations of “repression” in Kashmir and called it “a very well worn theme that Pakistan has often brought out”. The spokesman said, there is no truth in these allegations, adding that this kind of allegation runs directly counter to the understanding between the two leaders to tone down the political rhetoric between the two countries in the run up to the summit meeting.

The charges of “sharp increase” in incidents of rape and molestation by Indian forces are meant to convey a message to New Delhi that as far as Pakistan is concerned, the summit is all about a free and frank dialogue on Kashmir. It is believed that the Pakistan Foreign Secretary, Mr. Inamul Haq, conveyed the same impression when the Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan, Mr. Vijay K. Nambiar, called on him on July 7. Mr. Haq also sought to explain the rationale behind the Pakistani decision to invite Hurriyat Conference leaders for the so-called high tea by Pakistan High Commissioner in New Delhi. Mr. Nambiar on his part, reiterated the Indian position, telling him that facilitation of any contact between Gen. Musharraf and the Hurriyat leaders could dampen the summit atmosphere. But, Mr. Haq was not impressed.

There was no clue why such a strong statement was made on July 6, just a week before Gen. Musharraf’s visit to India. It was only on the day Gen. Musharraf took over as the President and the Prime Minister telephoned to congratulate him that the two sides had agreed to tone down their rhetoric against each other and not to issue provocative statements that could spoil the pre-summit atmosphere.

All sorts of assessments are being made about the sudden U-turn on the understanding between the two leaders. One explanation is that Islamabad is concerned at the positive response among Pakistanis to India’s confidence-building measures [CBMs] announced by the Prime Minister which seem to have thrown the Pakistani leadership off balance. For instance India’s DGMO offer aroused remarkable interest in Pakistan. As remarked by Kanti P. Bajpai, Associate Professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, coming so close as it does to the date of the talks, the signs are not very good. What may have begun as normal bargaining could go over the edge. India has kept its cool so far. But, one more statement from the Pakistani side and it may be difficult to desist from saying something inflammatory. According to Mr. G. Parthasarthy, former Indian ambassador to Pakistan, given the fact that Pakistan Foreign Office is headed by the hardline Abdul Sattar, who is given to indulge in propaganda, India should ignore the statement. However, he says, the way India has changed its foreign policy recently - withdrawal of ceasefire and Mr. Vajpayee’s decision to invite Gen. Musharraf - it has conveyed an impression of drift and weakness to Pakistan.

Within the Government in New Delhi, sources said, there never was any euphoria about the impending talks with Gen. Musharraf. But, there were expectations nevertheless that the relationship with Pakistan could be steered in a positive direction and a road map for cooperative bilateral engagement could be drawn. India was also signalling that it was ready to give a special focus to the dispute on Kashmir at the Agra talks is that is what Gen. Musharraf wants to show as a political gain to be able to move towards a normal relationship with India. It is in this context that the gratuitous attack on Indian policies in Jammu and Kashmir by the Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman has perplexed New Delhi. The sudden outburst from Pakistan is likely to strengthen the hands of those who have been highly skeptical of engaging Pakistan and Gen. Musharraf. Segments of the Indian policy establishment had been cautioning against the assessment that Gen. Musharraf is prepared to walk the”high road” along with Mr. vajpayee to peace and prosperity in the subcontinent They disagree with the suggestion that Gen. Musharraf is battling the hardliners in Pakistan and needs political cover on Kashmir, to normalize ties with India. Instead, they argue that an uncomplicated reading of all that Gen. Musharraf has said in recent days suggests he is no different from the other Pakistani hardliners on Kashmir.



Issues at stake

Amid reports of difference between India and Pakistan over the approach to be adopted on the Kashmir issue, Gen. Pervez Musharraf held detailed discussions with Foreign Minister, Abdul Sattar and other top officials to finalise the strategy. He also briefed the Federal Cabinet on July5 about the forthcoming visit to India and said he expected some breakthrough to resolve the outstanding issues between the two countries. He said, both sides would have to show flexibility to come to terms in the larger interest of their people. Meanwhile, Gen. Musharraf’s chief spokesman, Maj Gen.Rashid Qureshi, has rubbished speculation that the Pakistani army was divided over Gen. Musharraf’s initiative to seek a dialogue with India. According to Pakistan officials, apart from the main focus on Kashmir, the issues that would be taken up at the summit include problems of regional stability, nuclear arms race and conventional arms buildup. Other issues likely to figure during the talks are: Kashmir, Siachen glacier and the possibilities of broadening economic, commerce and trade engagements between the two countries. What is not yet decided is the sequence in which the two sides are approaching the agenda for talks. While India wants confidence-building and trust-enhancing measures to be the centre-piece of the summit, Pakistan desires the talks to be pegged on to Kashmir with other contentious issues to follow on the agenda.

It may be recalled that a mechanism for holding substantive bilateral discussions on kashmir already exists. Jammu and Kashmir is one of the eight outstanding issues in the Composite Dialogue Process [CDP]. The Foreign Secretaries of the two countries had one round of discussions on the vexed issue on October 17 in Islamabad. The CDP was suspended as a result of Kargil. While inviting Musharraf for a summit, India’s External Affairs Minister, Mr Jaswant Singh, had remarked that an agenda for the talks already exists in the CDP which comprises all the points of dispute between the neighbours.

Apart from J&K, the seven others are: Confidence Building Measures, Siachen,Wullar Barrage - Tulbul Navigation Project,Sir Creek, Terrorism, Economic cooperation and promotion of friendly exchanges in various fields.

The dispute over Tulbul power project begins right from its name: India calls it Tulbul and Pakistan refers to it as Wullar barrage. The crux of the matter is construction by India of a barrier on the Jhelum river to make it navigable during the lean period between late-October and mid-February. The dispute arose in 1984 when India started construction of a structure at the mouth of the Wular lake in the town of Ningli near Sopore downstream Jhelum. The 440 feet long structure was meant to make the river navigable. As the water flow reduces to a mere 2000 cusecs with a depth of 2.5 ft in the lean period, it becomes difficult to navigate. Pakistan raised objection to the Indian plan and got the construction stopped in 1987 saying that it was a violation of the Indus Water treaty of 1960 which bars storage of water.

On Siachen, India is considering an incremental set of measures to de-escalate the 17-year old conflict for the control of the Saltoro Ridge [in the Indian possession] ahead of the Siachen Glacier. First among them is a comprehensive ceasefire in the Saltoro region based on a freeze of their present ground positions to be followed by the demarcation [“authentication”] of the Actual Ground Position Line [AGPL] beyond NJ 9842 - the last point on the agreed Line of Control [LoC].

Old Defence Ministry hands say, the terms of an accord were ready in November, 1992 and all that is required now of both is assertion of statesmanlike leadership and a political will to abide by those terms.

The old ceasefire line drawn up at Karachi on July 27, 1949 ended far below Kashmir’s Northern boundary with the laconic words: “....thence north to the glaciers”. the detailed description in the authenticated mosaic maps said:...thence northwards along the boundary line going through point 18402 upto NJ 9842",

The present Line of Control, drawn up at Suchetgarh on Dec. 11, 1972 - in the wake of the Shimla agreement of July 2, 1972 - envisaged a line running “eastwards joining the glaciers.” The detailed description in the mosaic maps ended the LoC at the same grid point NJ 9842. As before, this was well below the glaciers which, apparently, were trusted to keep the two countries apart in this area because of its forbidding nature. Neither side had a presence there. Interest was aroused in the late Seventies. Maps which showed the line stretching eastwards to the Karakoram Pass - not far from China’s presence across the Line of Actual Control - and expeditions from the PoK to the region aroused India’s concern. The upshot was India’s pre-emptive Operation Meghdoot in April, 1984. a platoon each was placed at the Sia la and Bilafond La Passes. India acquired presence as far west as Indira Col which controls those passes. Pakistan acquired permanent presence at Cyong La Pas and some other points nearby.

A Siachen dispute was thus added to the Indo-Pak agenda. The battle zone comprised an inverted triangle resting on NJ 9842 with Indira Col and the Karakoram Pass as the other two extremities.

Rajiv Gandhi and Ziaul Haq agreed at their summit in New Delhi on Dec. 17, 1985 to hold talks on the issue at the level of Defence Ministers. Four rounds of talks prepared the ground and the fifth round in Islamabad on June 15-17, recorded the agreement under which the two sides promised to work towards a comprehensive settlement, redeploy their forces to reduce chances of conflict, avoid use of force and determination of future positions on the ground so as to conform with the Simla agreement. However, at the last moment Pakistan accused India of going back on its word and refusing to sign the accord. Ever since then, it has been included in the Composite dialogue process.



Vajpayee’s CBMs

Ahead of the arrival of Gen. Musharraf, Prime Minister Vajpayee on July 4 announced a series of confidence-building measures that attempt to create not only the right atmosphere for talks but also reaffirm the Indian leadership’s desire to live in peace with Pakistan. His set of measures stresses strengthening the people-to-people contact between the two neighbours. It sweeps across a wide spectrum of areas from the immediate release of Pakistani fishermen and civilian prisoners to offering seats to Pakistani students to premier Indian institutions and inviting artistes from across the border. Mr. Vajpayee has also asked the Commerce Ministry to reduce or eliminate tariff on certain items to encourage Pakistani imports into India.

Coming to the specifics, 20 scholarships will be given to students from Pakistan in Indian technical institutes. Poets, academics, writers etc. from Pakistan will be invited to India for a month as guests of the Government. Commerce Ministry will reduce or eliminate tariff duties from 50 items imported from Pakistan. All Pakistani civilian prisoners currently in India will be released. The Indian Coast Guard would not in future take Pakistani fishermen, who inadvertently transgress into Indian waters, in custody. Henceforth, they would be turned back after due warning. Sports Minister Uma Bharati also said she would not oppose the revival of cricket ties with Pakistan if there is a reciprocal gesture from that country regarding hockey.

As if not to be left behind, Pakistan has released an Indian round-the-world cyclist, Vikas Singh, who was jailed for three years for entering the country from Afghanistan without a visa.

In yet another initiative to set the tone of the India-Pak summit, the Prime Minister instructed the Director General of Military Operations [DGMO] to make a visit to Pakistan - unprecedented in many decades - to come out with a road map for a durable peace along the Line of Control [LoC] and the Siachen area. The DGMO, Lt. Gen. G.S. Sihota, has been asked to meet his Pakistani counterpart at an early date so that “the processes for peace along the LoC and the Actual Ground Position Line[AGPL] can be strengthened further and stabilized”, a statement from the Ministry of External Affairs said. [The AGPL refers to the 110 km of uncharted stretch between the LoC - the existing interim boundary between India and Pakistan in Kashmir - and the Siachen glacier.]

The proposed visit of the DGMO is expected to address two key security-related concerns: First, he is likely to discuss details which will ensure that infiltration across the LoC is reduced. Sources stress that reduction of infiltration into Kashmir is of prime concern to India. In case the cross-border movement of militants reduces, the Indo-Pak agenda has a better chance of acquiring greater substance, especially in the economic arena. Reduction of infiltration is also seen in New Delhi as the key to encouraging India to trim its forces in Jammu and Kashmir. Second, the DGMO’s visit is likely to initiate regular exchanges between the armed forces.

Describing the series of steps announced by the Prime Minister as “positive unilateralism”, an expert on strategic affairs,C. Raja Mohan, says, in coming up with these proposals and unilateral gestures, India is signalling that it will not let Gen. Musharraf limit the agenda of the Agra summit to discussion on Kashmir. In offering unilateral humanitarian gestures such as the release of Pakistani civilian prisoners in India, facilitating more imports from Pakistan and now calling for talks on nuclear and military CBMs, India is pointing to the much wider canvas that awaits Gen. Musharraf. Gen. Musharraf, to be sure, will continue to proclaim that the principal focus must remain on Kashmir and other subjects can wait. While refusing to shy away from discussing Kashmir, India will insist that the other subjects cannot be put on the back burner.



Musharraf’s obsession with Kashmir

Gen. Musharraf reiterated the theme of “centrality of Kashmir as the focus of his summit meet with Mr. Vajpayee. While addressing women representatives from different parts of the country, he made it clear that reduction in tension in South Asia was unlikely without the resolution of the Kashmir dispute. In another interview, the General said, talking of economic and cultural ties without taking up Kashmir first, would be like putting the cart before the horse. This, he said, cannot be done.

In an interview with Dileep Padgaonkar of The Times of India, Gen. musharraf hinted at the possible steps that he wants the two leaders to take at their Agra summit. While reiterating the need for the two countries to go beyond their publicly declared stands on the issue, he broadly endorsed the following propositions: [a] any solution to the Kashmir issue must be acceptable to India and Pakistan and emphatically involve the wishes of the Kashmiri people; [2] Pakistan will stand by all the agreements it has with India,beginning from the 1948 UN resolutions and including the Shimla agreement and the Lahore declaration; [3] The solution on Kashmir has to be a permanent one and must not be piecemeal and its implementation must not stretch over a long period of time. Instead, the dialogue should move in a structured manner and “within a certain time-frame in mind”.

The General was eager to dispel the impression in India that he is a war monger and, by that same token, made it clear that he is prepared to go as far as Vajpayee wants him to go to resolve the Kashmir issue to the satisfaction of the parties concerned. He hoped that he would be able to convince New Delhi to begin addressing the Kashmir issue on a priority basis so that swift progress can be made on other matters of mutual interest and concern to the two countries. The General did not commit himself to a firm position regarding support for militancy in the Valley, once a structured dialogue on Kashmir gets under way. He said, however, that progress in the dialogue would create due moderation in the militants. Scaling down the presence of Indian forces would contribute further to that moderation, he said.

Commenting on Gen. Musharraf’s demand for a dialogue on Kashmir in a time-bound framework, political observers say it was intended for effect. It may be part of an exercise to win over extremist groups who want no let-up in the jehad in Kashmir, summit or no summit. Already, the chief of the Hizbul Mujahideen, Syed Salahuddin, has said fighting will continue in Kashmir while India and Pakistan hold their potentially ice-breaking summit on July 15. Salahuddin, who also heads the 14-member United Jehad Council, ruled out a truce to mark Gen. Musharraf’s trip to India. He said Gen. Musharraf in his talks should stick to Pakistan’s “national stance” that the Kashmir dispute must be settled according to the wishes of the residents and “should not make any appeal to Jehadi groups to dwindle or stop anti-India military operations”.

The Indian establishment is thinking of a “Lahore Plus” formula to make the Asdgra summit meaningful. The formula is expeted to encompass most o the confidence-building measures agreed to during the Lahore summit in February, 1999 and a road map of a year-long programme for intensive interction between the two sides, including converting the summit into an annual feature. Though the formula will not be called Lahore Plus - Indians are aware of Musharraf’s sensitivity to that name - many of the steps likely to be talked about for normalising ties will come from the Lahore agreement. But, an assurance from Islamabad that it is willing to give up its policy of “cumpulsive hostility” towards India is essential if this formula is to be implemented.

Political observers neither write off the Vajpayee-Sharif summit nor entertain an undue optimism about its ending up with a big success. They however, say, the Indo-Pakistan relationship has reached such depths in the last decade that even the suggestion of a movement upwards would be a political achievement. The pessimists believe that with the two contending parties holding on steadfastly to their respective positions on Kashmir, the issue would continue to linger on in a state of perpetual stalemate. But, deep down the in their hearts, everybody hopes to see the two leaders making a beginning in generating some confidence-building measures that could bring the two countries closer.

At the same time, even a small advance depends on a big change in mindsets in Islamabad and New Delhi. If the two leaders are ready to break the mould, there is a whole agenda of unlimited topics on which they could show progress and make the Agra summit a path-breaking one. For the two leaders, there is a history to be made at Agra, if they can let common sense prevail at the summit. But, as remarked by an analyst on strategic affairs, C. Raja Mohan, common sense has become a rare commodity in Indo-Pak relations. Raja Mohan says, the success of Agra summit is not about each side doling out concessions to the other in some kind of negotiations, but about their readiness to write political cheques. There are very few people in the Indian establishment who share Mr. Vajpayee’s enthusiasm for another attempt at improving relations with Pakistan. Its proxy war against India for more than a decade has robbed most policy makers in New Delhi of any hope for a different relationship with Islamabad. After the Lahore peace mission was hijacked to Kargil, any engagement with Pakistan is seen as a futile exercise.

Yet, for India, there is no alternative to engaging Pakistan and attempting to build a more peaceful environment in the sub-continent. In reaching out to Gen. Musharraf against the advice of many thin-tanks, Mr.Vajpayee has recognized this. And his task at Agra will be about finding out if Gen. Musharraf too is ready to think differently about the future of Indo-Pak relations.

Depending on the chemistry the two leaders, one an army general and another a poet-politician, are able to build, more meetings at New York on the sidelines of the annual General Assembly session in September as well as at the SAARC summit in Kathmandu, as and when it is called, are not ruled out. Having been ditched after the Lahore declaration in the form ofKargil, India had refused to have an eye-to-eye contct with Pakistani leaders.

Musharraf’s dilemma is that he an neither afford to be too hostile nor too friendly. Most people are fully aware of the constraints, compulsions and circumstances, under which Gen. Musharraf is functioning in his country. He is facing an unprecedented economic crisis and unless foreign assistance comes to his rescue, the entire economic structure of Pakistan could crumble down. He is under some international pressure to seek peace with India through bilateral interaction, instead of dealing with its neighbour through the muzzle of the terrorist guns. Internally, there are pressures on him not to “bend his knees” in his dealings with India. Powerful jehadi groups have almost risen in revolt against his impending visit to India, which they demand, should be treated as an enemy country, to be dealt with only through a jehad. In keeping with this hardline stand of theirs, the jehadi groups in Kashmir, overwhelmingly manned by foreign mercenaries, have stepped up their attacks after Gen. Musharraf announced his decision to visit India.

Caught between the proverbial devil and the deep sea, there is not much hope of Gen. Musharraf coming up to the expectations of his people back home, in his confabulations with the Indian Prime Minister. Almost all those expectations revolve round Kashmir which undoubtedly is the most deep-rooted obsession of Pakistan. All that Musharraf can do on this issue is to disappoint them.

New Delhi has had a serious problem getting anything right with Pakistan. It has tripped up on one initiative after another. When the bus diplomacy failed, with the bust itself getting hijacked to Kargil, it took to ceasefire diplomacy. But, the various cease fires, be it with the Hizbul Mujahiden or on Ramzan, or in the North-East, have only stoked fires.

Pakistan is constantly taking recourse to such ploys as UN resolutions, India’s commitments, right of self-determination, plebiscite in Kashmir Valley, dangers to peace in south Asia, and so on. But, at the root cause of all this exercise is Pakistan’s desperate desire to pressure India into surrendering Kashmir. The only reason behind this mad territorial craving is that since religion was the basis of partition in 1947, Kashmir being a Muslim majority area, should have gone to Pakistan. That is precisely the unfinished agenda. It apparently does not make any difference to powers that be in Pakistan that the myth of two nation theory was exploded decisively far back in 1971 when more than half the population opted out of Islamic dominion of Pakistan to carve out a separate sovereign nation.

It is this inexplorable obsessive mindset of Pakistan which has led its leaders, its politicians, its fundamentalist parties and its jehadi groups to issue threats to India, day in and day out. Apart from the talks of “unfinished agenda”, people in India have been hearing of such things as a “thousand years war, bleeding India with a thousand cuts, crush India, Islamisation of whole India, unfurling of Islamic lag on Red Fort, holding up India’s progress”, and umpteen other inimidatory words.

Against tat background, the big question is whether the new Taj Mahal diplomacy in the moonless light bring light - in terms of tangible results and whether, the agreements, if any will hold, unlike post-Lahore. Political analyst Brahma Chellany says, it is unclear what fundamental progress can be achieved at Agra on Kashmir. Given the bitter history they share over the dispute, can the two leaders be expected to suddenly bury their hatchet and smoke the peace pipe? For Pakistan, Mr. Chellaney says, the motivations of seeking peace are different than those of India. For Pakistan, dialogue with India is tactically wise and politically advantageous. It is valuable for improving its global image and building its military regime’s legitimacy in the eyes of the West. It also meets a key condition set by multilateral and bilateral creditors for further debt-service rescheduling.

But, do these motivations translate into a desire for real and lasting peace. Observers say it is unlikely that China, a traditionally close ally of Pakistan, will let go the Pakistani pressure on India, which is part of its policy of containment of India’s ambitions of regional power. Peace with New Delhi will marginalise Pakistan regionally and internationally allow India to emerge as the undisputed regional giant and a strong competitor to China. The Sino-Pak nexus will cease to hold strategic value - to the detriment of China’s containment strategy. A Pakistan stripped of its core cementing element - eternal enmity with India - will be reduced to a battlefield for its five feuding ethnic groups.

Brahma Chellaney says, such potentially asymmetrical peace dividends suggest that dialogue by itself cannot bring progress. In fact, the 1089-99 decade of Indo-Pak dialogue and confidence-building measures was marked by an escalating proxy war against India and direct aggression post-Lahore. No peace process can be sustained when one side is driven by far-reaching strategic objectives and the other side merely seeks narrow tactical gains. This mismatch was evident at Simla and Lahore and is likely to emerge from Agra as well.

Pakistan genuinely believes that it is because of the trump card it holds - its ability to bleed India - and the consequent Indian fatigue in fighting its Jehad that Vajpayee is frantically pursuing one peace initiative after another. Pakistan’s precarious economic state, contrary to what many Indians believe, has little to do with its “war of a thousand cuts” against India. Islamabad can sustain that covert war indefinitely because it is cheap and so effective that an enmeshed and weakened India does not dare to retaliate, as if it masochistically enjoys being bled by its much smaller rival.

The success of the summit of course, would thus be measured, from Pakistan point of view, by the climb-down Mr. Vajpayee makes, and from Mr. Vajpayee’s view, the realism Pakistan demonstrates to reach a negotiated settlement. The alternative would be to put Kashmir into the freezer, like the India-China border dispute has been put on the back-burner and while simultaneously hold regular talks for its ultimate resolution, not to allow the border dispute come in the way of normalisation of relations. But, the high expectations Gen. Musharraf has aroused among his people, and the claim by the Jehadis that it is they who brought India back on its knees and forced it to invite Musharraf and open talks on Kashmir, it would be difficult for the self-appointed President of Pakistan to offer any compromise or even agree to consider the idea of recognising the Line of Control as the Indo-Pak border. The least Pakistan can be expected is, as some media reports from Pakistan suggest, is that India withdraw from the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley and Pakistan could “concede” Ladakh and Jammu to be part of India. For India, this is a laughable proposition as India views only the Kashmir Valley as the focus of dispute with the Hindu-majority Jammu and Buddhist-majority Ladakh not the areas of dispute with the Islamic State of Pakistan. Pakistan’s claim to the Kashmiri-speaking Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley has been weakened after the Bangali-speaking Muslims in the erstwhile East Pakistandecided in 1971 that they cannot co-exist with the Punjabi-speaking Muslims of West Pakistan. But, since the successive Governments in Pakistan have aroused passions of the people on the Kashmir issue to the point of fanaticism and have often used the issue to perpetuate their rule, Gen. Musharraf, who himself lacks legitimacy in the eyes of the public, who has angered the Jehadis by asking them to put off their guns and who has vowed, in one of the interviews “to create history”, it will be difficult to dilute his stand on Kashmir. To the same extent, bound by a resolution by the Indian Parliament that Kashmir was an integral part of India, and lacking a two-thirds majority in Parliament, necessitated to amend the Constitution, if any territory in Kashmir is to be ceded to Pakistan, Mr. Vajpayee is in no position to send Gen. Musharraf home with any concrete promises of finding himself a place in the history of the Indian-subcontinent.

Pakistan calls Kashmir as its “unfinished agenda” of independence. India says, the demand is a reflection on this country’s unblemished record as a secular State. Pakistan says, UN security Council resolutions must be implemented and the people of Kashmir given right to self-determination. India says, the resolutions are too old to be implemented, they were passed under the UN charter which do not make them obligatory for India to enforce them, and that Pakistan has itself violated the resolutions by not heeding the call, made in the resolutions, to withdraw completely from the part of Kashmir which is under its control, [India can keep its security forces in Kashmir to deal with law and order problems under the resolution but Pakistan cannot]. It is, therefore, Pakistan to be blamed for non-implementation of the resolutions. Yet, Pakistan’s agenda is “Kashmir, the whole of Kashmir, nothing but Kashmir”. For Kashmir, the other issues are irritants. Kashmir is the main dispute. Once Kashmir dispute is resolved, differences on other issues will not be difficult to iron out. For Pakistan, it is Kashmir and other issues. For India, it is all issues including Kashmir. Notwithstanding Gen. Musharraf’s promises of being “flexible” and “open-minded”, when it comes to Kashmir, he makes use all the English words at his command to call it, the core issue, the central issue, which must be dealt with first.

In his new year “Musings from Kumarakom”, Mr.Vajpayee talks about his determination to seriously address the Kashmir problem, which he identified as one of the bitter legacies of the partition. He acknowledged both the internal and external dimensions of the Kashmir dispute. He expressed the desire to heal the wounds of the Kashmiris and negotiate seriously with Pakistan about the issue in his quest to build a new architecture of peace in the sub-continent. But, Mr. Vajpayee has been found to hit back when provoked. Annoyed by Gen. Musharraf’s description of Kashmir on June 15 as the “unfinished agenda” of partition that needed to be “finished”, Mr. Vajpayee, in his first meeting with newsmen after his knee operation in Mumbai [June 19] called kashmir an integral part of India which was not open to any compromise. External Affairs Minister, Mr. Jaswant Singh, too used the same term to emphasise the integration of Kashmir with India, adding further that it had been sanctified by a unanimous resolution by the Indian Parliament.

Political observers, therefore say, the success of the Agra summit will depend on Gen. Musharraf accepting the imperative of good-neighbourly relations between the two countries, without allowing the Kashmir dispute to hamper it, a solution of which can be actively pursued. The yardstick of measuring his commitment to good-neighbourly relations will depend on his reining in the terrorists, stopping infiltration into Kashmir and recognising the dignity of the Line of Control without prejudice to their known positions on Kashmir. If Mr. Vajpayee hears Gen Musharaf saying “yes” to these questions, he would have no hesitation in going more than half way to make the summit a success. But, if Mr. Vajpayee believes Gen. Musharraf is trying to use violence as a lever to extract political concessions from India or sense that the General wants peace as a temporary reprieve to get Pakistan out of the current difficult situation, he will have little incentive to go forward. Not having another meeting with Gen. Musharraf, at the coming UN General Assembly session or the overdue SAARC summit in Kathmandu, is not going to terribly hurt Mr. Vajpayee’s own political fortune or that of his party.

An understanding between the two leaders on Kashmir and ending violence in the Valley should unlock a very productive engagement across a broad front. a full range of confidence-building measures - nuclear and military - can easily be negotiated starting with those that were announced at Lahore two years ago. More CBMs can be developed from the current reduction of military temperatures on the Line of Control. Cessation of cross-border terrorism will automatically reduce the need for a large Indian troop presence in the Valley and make lift a bit easier for the Kashmiri people.

Trade is one area which needs attention. While India has accorded the “most favoured nation” status to Pakistan in the matter of trade, Pakistan is yet to reciprocate. It will benefit immensely from such an arrangement. There have been positive signals from Pakistan about allowing the proposed 2700 kilometre long Indo-Iran gas pipeline to pass through its territory. Iran has reportedly agreed to pay 300 million dollars to cash-strapped Pakistan as transit fee.