The Hindu : Talking to Pakistan

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Saturday, Oct 04, 2003

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Talking to Pakistan

By Amit Baruah

Raised expectations and abject failures are not prescriptions for long-term, meaningful engagement between India and Pakistan.

A LITTLE over six months have elapsed since the Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, offered the hand of friendship to Pakistan at a well-attended public gathering in Srinagar on April 18. His offer took many, including the Pakistani leadership, by surprise; coming as it did after more than 16 months of unprecedented tension and non-contact between the two countries.

Ten days later, the Pakistan Prime Minister, Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, called up Mr. Vajpayee. They discussed the restoration of transport links, a return of High Commissioners and resumption of sporting contact. An "invitation" from Mr. Jamali was extended to Mr. Vajpayee to visit Pakistan; it was politely declined.

In concrete terms, the gains of resumed "contact" have meant a return of High Commissioners, the resumption of the Lahore-Delhi bus service, some relaxation on the sporting front and a release of detained prisoners and fishermen.

The medical treatment of Noor Fatima, the little Pakistani girl, at a Bangalore hospital, showed that Pakistanis were as "normal" as the neighbours next door. As a people-to-people confidence-building measure, Noor's case set a new standard between the two countries. Delegations of parliamentarians and businesspersons have also been visiting Islamabad and New Delhi. For those who have never travelled to either country before, the experience could not but have been enriching.

Those were the gains. For the tens of thousands of divided families that straddle the subcontinent, the non-resumption of the Samjhauta Express and the air links is a continuing disaster. Death, birth and marriage are the major occasions that necessitate travel for those with family ties in India and Pakistan. For a long time, it was Islamabad that had made such travel difficult ; it believed that people-to-people contact was harmful to the military establishment. The Indian bureaucracy now seems to have veered around to the same view.

With no resumption of rail services (the cheapest mode of travel) in sight, there is enormous pressure on the Lahore-Delhi bus service. No "lobby" works in favour of India-Pakistan travel .

Pakistan's insistence on a "guarantee" from India that it will not suspend overflights again has held up the resumption of the Delhi-Lahore and the Mumbai-Karachi flights. India is highly unlikely to offer such a guarantee. Pakistan possibly feels that Indian airlines are losing more from the lack of overflights than its own carrier. The High Commissioners and their staff still cannot leave the "municipal limits" of New Delhi and Islamabad except with express permission from their country of accreditation. Not a happy situation. But given the state of bilateral relationship, not a major surprise either.

With one stroke, Mr. Vajpayee's Srinagar speech took international pressure off India to resume contact with Pakistan. Today India favours limited contact but says a clear `no' to a dialogue as long as Pakistan favours the strategic option of continuing cross-border terrorism.

Clear and public action against the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Jaish-e-Muhammad — the arrest of the outfits' leaders, the closure of their offices, a ban on fund-raising and the closure of terrorist-training camps — are but a first step Pakistan can take to demonstrate that it is serious about tackling terror against India. Can the Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf, not control the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate despite having his own man as its chief for the past two years?

Dialogue for the sake of dialogue or for pleasing Washington & Co. has its own consequences. Raised expectations and abject failures are not prescriptions for long-term, meaningful engagement between India and Pakistan.

In 1997, Prime Ministers Inder Kumar Gujral and Nawaz Sharif agreed on the need to have a framework for dialogue. Diplomats managed, without leaks to the Press, to come out with an agreement that provided for a structured dialogue after months of negotiations. Talks were held within this framework till Pakistan raised the lack-of-progress-on-Kashmir issue to block further movement. Despite the "advances" in Lahore two years later, the June 1997 agreement still provides a basic framework for structured dialogue on all contentious issues.

The stress on "formal dialogue" is a trap. A dialogue between Riaz Khokhar and Kanwal Sibal, the two Punjabi-speaking Foreign Secretaries of Pakistan and India, is hardly likely to yield anything substantial at this stage.

In 1998 and 1999, Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, and R.K. Mishra, a former newspaper editor considered close to a business house, were used as a "back-channel" by India and Pakistan. Their cover was, however, blown by the few precautions they took to ensure real secrecy. Mr. Vajpayee's June visit to China has provided yet another model for future India-Pakistan engagement — the appointment of Special Representatives to deal with the border issue.

The Gujral-Sharif method, the back-channel or high-level dialogue with trusted representatives of the Indian and Pakistani leaderships are all examples that can be followed by New Delhi and Islamabad. For either of these methods to be used as a long-term tool for rapprochement, the necessity of political will to settle disputes is non-negotiable.

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