Vajpayee invites Musharraf

By C. Raja Mohan

AFTER SHUNNING Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Chief Executive of Pakistan, for more than a year, the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, has finally offered to meet him under certain conditions. In his ``Musings from Kumarakom'', Mr. Vajpayee has extended an open-ended invitation for Gen. Musharraf to come to India. ``Show us you can rein in the Jihadis, and you are welcome here'' is the essence of Mr. Vajpayee's message to Gen. Musharraf. It will be a while before we know if the General is ready to come to Delhi. But there is no question that Mr. Vajpayee has taken one more risky step forward in his search for peace with Pakistan.

Ever since he ousted the Nawaz Sharif Government and took charge in October 1999, Gen. Musharraf expressed two strong desires - one to meet Mr. Vajpayee at ``any time and any place'' and the other a serious discussion with India on the Kashmir dispute, which he said was lacking in the earlier peace initiative of Mr. Vajpayee at Lahore. Mr. Vajpayee is now saying he will meet both the demands of Gen. Musharraf, if Pakistan is willing to put the gun down.

To put it in Mr. Vajpayee's own words: ``India is willing and ready to seek a lasting solution to the Kashmir problem. Towards this end, we are prepared to recommence talks with Pakistan at any level, including the highest level, provided Islamabad gives sufficient proof of its preparedness to create a conducive atmosphere for a meaningful dialogue''.

The reference to talks at the highest level is a signal that Mr. Vajpayee is ready to host Gen. Musharraf in New Delhi. After Mr. Vajpayee's visit to Lahore in February 1999, it is now Pakistan's turn to send its top gun to India. In offering to receive Gen. Musharraf, Mr. Vajpayee has reversed India's year-long refusal to engage the military brass in Pakistan. Not only did the Government reject Pakistan's offer for bilateral summit meeting but avoided contact with Gen. Musharraf even in a multilateral setting.

Deeply angered by what the Government saw as Gen. Musharraf's personal role in the Kargil betrayal of the Lahore peace initiative, India supported the immediate international moves to isolate his regime after the coup. New Delhi backed the effort to keep Pakistan out of the Commonwealth summit, and sought a postponement of the SAARC summit at the end of 1999. At the millennium summit of the United Nations in New York, Mr. Vajpayee did everything possible to prevent an accidental running into the Pakistani General. Now Mr. Vajpayee is saying he is ready to receive Gen. Musharraf in New Delhi, with just one proviso that he crack down on the jihadi groups fomenting terrorism in India.

In proclaiming his readiness to directly engage Gen. Musharraf, Mr. Vajpayee has transformed his Ramzan initiative for a ceasefire in Kashmir into a broader approach to renew the peace process with Pakistan. But in one fundamental sense, what Mr. Vajpayee is proposing is very different from the Lahore initiative. He had gone to Lahore with the assumption that India could begin a comprehensive peace process with Pakistan even while Islamabad extended support to cross-border violence in India. Mr. Vajpayee is determined not to make that mistake again. At the same time, by linking his initiative in Kashmir to a peace process with Pakistan, he has put the dispute over Jammu and Kashmir at the front and centre of the proposed dialogue with Islamabad.

In moving India towards uncharted diplomatic waters on Kashmir, Mr. Vajpayee has laid down a broad set of parameters for the new engagement with Pakistan. No Government can be expected to give away its negotiating position on the eve of such a sensitive diplomatic effort. But his ``Musings at Kumarakom'' define the outlines of the new Indian diplomacy on Kashmir.

First, Mr. Vajpayee has made a fundamental break with the traditional Indian thinking on Kashmir that preferred to leave the question unresolved rather than address the dispute with Pakistan frontally. He is reflecting the new thinking in India that the time has come to find a final solution to the vexatious dispute. This new line was implicit in Mr. Vajpayee's Lahore initiative. Recall the statement of the former Pakistan Foreign Secretary, Mr. Niaz Naik, who acted as a back channel between Mr. Vajpayee and Mr. Sharif in the brief period between Lahore and Kargil. After the Kargil crisis, Mr. Naik had stated that India and Pakistan were close to resolving the Kashmir dispute in a manner of months. In declaring his readiness to find a ``lasting solution'', Mr. Vajpayee is now making it an explicit Indian objective.

Second, Mr. Vajpayee has promised that ``in our search for a lasting solution to the Kashmir problem, both in its external and internal dimensions, we shall not traverse solely on the beaten track of the past. Rather we shall be bold and innovative designers of a future architecture of peace and prosperity for the entire South Asian region''. The only guiding consideration will be ``peace, justice and vital interests of the nation''. This readiness to move away from stated positions on Kashmir should address the long-standing grievance of Pakistan that India was unwilling to engage seriously on the subject.

Finally, in preparing the nation to find a lasting solution to the Kashmir dispute, Mr. Vajpayee has made it quite clear that it cannot be based on the principle of the two-nation theory, which partitioned the country. In short, the ultimate solution cannot be based on another partition of Jammu and Kashmir on communal lines. This principle, on which there is absolute unanimity within the nation, Mr. Vajpayee is making it clear, is not up for negotiation with Pakistan.

Will Gen. Musharraf respond positively to the unprecedented shift in the Indian position on Kashmir? Or, can he? Mr. Vajpayee's offer to receive him if he reins in the jihadis is indeed a big political test for the General. The Pakistani response will show whether Gen. Musharraf is part of the solution or the problem. If he pleads that he cannot control the militant groups, he will be either dissimulating or confirming that he is a ``useless dictator''. What is the point of engaging a leader on fundamental issues, if he cannot deliver?

If Gen. Musharraf, on the other hand, can grab the opportunity that Mr. Vajpayee is offering him, he could go down as a leader who has got India to negotiate seriously on Kashmir and has laid the basis for lasting peace in the subcontinent, a goal that has eluded so many leaders of Pakistan. Gen. Musharraf's response will also reveal the broader direction in which Pakistan is headed. Is he willing to and capable of leading Pakistan away from the jihadis, and regaining its earlier standing as a moderate Islamic state and putting peace, modernisation and development back on the national agenda?

A lot will depend too on the kind of pressure the international community can bring to bear on Pakistan's generals at the moment. For more than a decade, the world has clamoured for a serious engagement between India and Pakistan that will address the Kashmir dispute and the nuclear tensions built into the bilateral relationship. Mr. Vajpayee is saying India is ready to move forward to a new architecture of peace in the region, if Pakistan is willing to end support to violence by the jihadi groups. The stakes are far too high for the whole world to let the incipient peace process in the subcontinent collapse because a powerful section of the Pakistani military establishment has become a prisoner of the jihadi groups.

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