Evidence of goodwill

EXUDING A SENSE of goodwill, Pakistan's Chief Executive, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has accepted the invitation for a summit with the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee. Yet while launching a charm offensive to reciprocate Mr. Vajpayee's sentiment-laden invitation to a joint adventure of peace and friendship, Gen. Musharraf has minced no words too about his prescription for the means to settle the bilateral dispute over Jammu and Kashmir. However, the pulsating spirit of his communication to the Prime Minister is one of friendliness and not provocative gamesmanship. The crux of the message concerning the Jammu and Kashmir issue is that Pakistan's military ruler has not laid down any pre- condition for the ``sincere and candid'' talks that he would ``look forward'' to holding with Mr. Vajpayee. Now, official India and Pakistan will obviously tend to differ on the diplomatic connotations of these two catch-phrases regarding each other's sincerity of purpose and candid disposition. More importantly, the prospective summit will be the best forum for the two sides to address the implications of Gen. Musharraf's stated preference for a solution ``in accordance with the wishes of the Kashmiri people''. The political leaders on both sides will be well advised to refrain from obstructionist public discourses on the explicit meaning of this formulation or even the possible suspicions about its hidden agenda. Obviously, there are several ways in which the ``wishes of the Kashmiri people'' could be ascertained, and the objective reality at this moment is that Gen. Musharraf has called neither for a format of tripartite talks, involving India and Pakistan as also the `Kashmiri groups', nor a plebiscite under the now irrelevant U.N. resolutions on this issue. It is no less a matter of new nuance, too, that Pakistan has now referred to the need to know the ``wishes of the Kashmiri people'' in regard to a problem concerning the entire State of Jammu and Kashmir. It might be more than a question of mere nomenclature that Gen. Musharraf has spoken about the totality of Jammu and Kashmir as against Islamabad's past practice of seeking to `champion' the cause of `Kashmiri Muslims' in some apparent exclusiveness.

The totality of Pakistan's latest response does not negate Mr. Vajpayee's preference for a ``composite dialogue''. While harping on the Jammu and Kashmir issue as ``the root cause of tension'' between India and Pakistan, Gen. Musharraf appears willing to discuss ``all other outstanding issues... as well''. A pledge of this magnitude is matched by an effort to reciprocate Mr. Vajpayee's earlier reaffirmation of his belief that a stable and prosperous Pakistan is in India's national interest. Islamabad's ``wish'' is to ``see a stable and prosperous India at peace with its neighbours''. It will be foolish in the present context to read into this any implicit criticism of India for not having been a peaceable neighbour.

The new political momentum on the bilateral front, generated by the exchange of careful communications at the highest level, should facilitate the preparations for a cordial summit. The challenges before the two leaders cannot be exaggerated, but it will be a tragedy if any pre-summit posturings by them or by others were to make a travesty of this exercise. From the incursion into Jammu and Kashmir in the late 1940s at the time of the Partition to the Kargil crisis in 1999 and beyond, the history of bilateral ties is replete with perceived instances of betrayal and missed opportunities. If the current initiative is not to collapse, the mandarins of India and Pakistan should resist the temptation to raise the maximalist rhetoric to a crescendo ahead of the summit that could take place in June or July. Unseemly indeed was the shadow war of words that the Pakistan Foreign Minister, Mr. Abdul Sattar, and his Indian counterpart, Mr. Jaswant Singh, have waged just now while answering media queries. In the process, their stated respect for friendly atmospherics was nearly lost.

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