For sustainable talks with Pakistan

THE FIRM PLEDGE by the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, to pursue a process of dialogue with Pakistan is certainly a welcome sign of salutary diplomacy. An exposition of the necessary political will marked his reply to a debate in the Lok Sabha on the recent Agra summit. Undeniably, this acquires importance in the context of unmitigated frustrations in both New Delhi and Islamabad over the manner in which the Agra talks had decelerated without a definitive outcome. However, Mr. Vajpayee has also disclosed, perhaps consciously, that he resorted to rhetorical repartees in a serious effort to stop Pakistan's President and Chief Executive, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, in his tracks at Agra. Finding that Gen. Musharraf would not relent in his advocacy of the ``wishes'' of the Kashmiris, the Prime Minister, by his own statement, asked the Pakistan Army Chief whether he had in fact ``consulted'' the people of his country while assuming power in 1999. Now, shorn of the perceived efficacy of this candid counter-argument in silencing Gen. Musharraf on that occasion, Mr. Vajpayee has shown himself to be not averse to adopting negative tactics to score simple debating points. Gen. Musharraf had in fact been invited to that summit in spite of his status as a military ruler who suppressed democracy in his own country. Nonetheless, it is also possible that the Prime Minister has not revealed the totality of the relevant context out of some concern for the confidentiality of the overall conversations that he had with Gen. Musharraf at Agra. Yet, a rational reality that must be underlined is that diplomatic semantics, however smart, cannot lead to a sustainable dialogue with Pakistan. Moreover, there is really no meaningful alternative to substantive parleys with Islamabad.

It is no less true that the Musharraf administration often tends to play to the gallery outside the strict domain of an active engagement with India. Notable among Pakistan's contributions to the semantic discourse on the Agra summit is Gen. Musharraf's presumptive attempt at a dialectical dismissal of New Delhi's accusations about Islamabad-inspired cross-border terrorism within Jammu and Kashmir as also elsewhere in India. In Islamabad's book, the alleged acts of terror on the Indian side of the Line of Control (LoC) do not bristle with horrific attributes on two counts. Pakistan's contention is that the LoC is not the same as an international border and that the saga of terror, which India campaigns against, is intrinsically a characteristic of the Kashmiri ``freedom struggle''. Now, while the Kashmiri ``freedom struggle'' is in some ways central to the main dispute between New Delhi and Islamabad, quintessentially semantic indeed is Pakistan's proclivity to disregard India's arguments on the basis of a distinction between the LoC and a border.

Certainly unexceptionable is Mr. Vajpayee's sense of confidence in India's ability to meet the multi-pronged menace of terrorism and also any external aggression. In a sense, though, the future course of India-Pakistan talks may be charted in the context of the Prime Minister's insistence on judging Pakistan by the ``litmus test'' of the efforts it might make to end cross-border terrorism. Islamabad's considered responses, as distinct from its initial dismay over some aspects of Mr. Vajpayee's latest statement, will also be crucial. At Agra, Mr. Vajpayee and Gen. Musharraf appeared to have reckoned, either directly or implicitly, with the possibility of a trade-off between Pakistan's plea for intensive discussions on Kashmir as the prime issue and India's demand that Islamabad agree to address the question of cross-border terrorism. In this limited sweep, the deliberations at Agra marked a qualitative departure from the Lahore Declaration of 1999. New Delhi's perception is that the Lahore and Shimla documents do not enthuse Gen. Musharraf. However, a forward movement can yet be envisioned if India and Pakistan strive harder for friendship in the unstable bilateral environment that calls for conventional and nuclear risk reductions too.

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