Staging summits

By P. R. Chari

IT WOULD be pointless to dispute whether the glass of Indo- Pakistan relations is half-full or half-empty after the Agra Summit. And whether it was a success because Pakistan's President and the Prime Minister have agreed to meet again. The enduring image after the curtain came down in Agra is that of Gen. Pervez Musharraf going off to the airport after midnight. Sans a joint statement, sans the customary handshake with Mr. Vajpayee and sans a photo opportunity to thank his Indian hosts.

Agra, no less than Kargil, was a media event. There is little doubt that Pakistan exploited the Indian media to project its viewpoint, while the Indian media managers were blundering around. The electronic media provided some corrective here with their round-the-clock coverage. Banal, repetitive, lowbrow, but the sheer barrage of information and instant analysis on the box has created a greater public awareness of the issues in contention. Whether this will enlarge the constituency for peace in the two countries is too early to judge.

So much is clear. The killings in Kashmir increased during the days of the summit, and will continue. The irony is that the Kashmiris are losing their lives in the effort by India and Pakistan to save them from the `Other'. Indubitably, Kashmir is the central issue; it was the chief reason and/or the chief operational theatre in all the conflicts since Independence. Indo-Pakistan tensions and instabilities have consolidated around Kashmir; this is evident from the disputed issues identified for negotiation such as Siachen, Wullar Barrage, terrorism, drug- trafficking and so on, which are primarily concerned with Kashmir.

So much is also clear that Kashmir was the sticking point precipitating the failure of the summit. Pakistan's effort to incorporate words into the joint statement suggesting that India would ascertain the will of the people was really designed to smuggle in the plebiscite modality that Pakistan has been plugging for over the last half century. India's desire to introduce words suggesting that Pakistan had conceded the need for moderating cross-border terrorism was unacceptable to Pakistan as it would have amounted to a confession of guilt before the international community. The resulting impasse can be papered over, but it is doubtful if these maximalist positions could ever be reconciled in future negotiations.

What are the lessons that can be drawn from the failure of the summit, and what should be avoided in future? Five can be recognised. First, an agenda was required if substantive issues were to be discussed in Agra; in its absence, it was predictable that the meeting would be infructuous. On the other hand, if the summit was intended to develop a personal chemistry between the two leaders, there was no need for difficult issues to have been negotiated. It bears mention that the agenda, which fructified into the Shimla Agreement of July 2, 1972, was finalised in a preliminary meeting held in Murree, near Islamabad, in April that year. D.P. Dhar, Chairman of the Policy Planning Division in the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, and Aziz Ahmed, Secretary- General in Pakistan's Foreign Affairs Ministry, headed the two delegations. Draft agendas were exchanged and discussed in Murree, priorities laid down, and convergences and divergences of views identified. This made the Shimla Agreement easier to negotiate. Apparently, India's efforts to persuade Pakistan to discuss an agenda at Agra did not succeed; in its absence, the negotiations were less than useful. India should insist therefore on a clear agenda before the next meeting.

Second, empirical evidence suggests that successful negotiations between adversarial states have relied on gradualism and not on achieving spectacular results. Indeed, wisdom decrees that partial progress on some issues is more fruitful than linking all disputed issues to one central question and risking complete failure. Pakistan hinged the Agra meeting on Kashmir; this foredoomed the summit to failure since no adequate foundation had been laid for reaching a modus vivendi. The agenda to be negotiated ahead of the next round of discussions must address the Kashmir imbroglio in the light of the sensitivities of both countries. India must forcefully urge that, apart from the Kashmir Valley, the other regions of the erstwhile princely state of Kashmir viz. Ladakh, Northern Territories, Baltistan, areas ceded by Pakistan to China, Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (Azad Kashmir) and Jammu should also be included in the discussions.

Third, the need for reticence in speech and action during the negotiations cannot be over-emphasised. Hence, using the media to convey messages to the negotiating teams was juvenile. Ms. Sushma Swaraj's omission of Kashmir among the issues discussed and Gen. Musharraf's use of intemperate language in his breakfast meeting with the media ruined the atmospherics surrounding the summit. Both countries should remember that the general practice in high- level negotiations is that a final statement is issued after the meeting and not during it. Such aberrant conduct degrades the negotiations and should be avoided in future.

Fourth, the hope that a foreign policy success in the Indo- Pakistan context would achieve a domestic consensus on its contours seems illusory. The opposite might be true, viz. the absence of a domestic consensus adversely affects the foreign policy process. No effort was made by the NDA Government to seek a domestic consensus or a negotiating mandate before the summit. But, Gen. Musharraf went through the motions of consulting a large number of the Pakistani elite and his Corps Commanders, but in a military dictatorship he was obviously better placed to derive a domestic consensus on his negotiating stance at the summit. The lesson for India is that a firmer negotiating mandate should be sought before the next meeting to avoid the rifts that became visible within the Government itself during the negotiations.

Fifth, the issue of unilateral declarations by India before the summit to provide educational opportunities for Pakistani students and researchers, ease visa restrictions, open further points of ingress along the Line of Control and so on were singularly ill-conceived. Designed, no doubt, to improve the atmospherics, they succeeded in achieving exactly the opposite by placing Pakistan on the defensive and suspicious of being upstaged. Unilateral concessions, which can, in any case, be unilaterally abrogated, are hardly useful if the adversary does not respond positively.

The foregoing may suggest that India could profitably refrain from joining any further summitry with Pakistan. There are two major reasons, however, why negotiations are unavoidable. First, the reciprocal Indo-Pakistan nuclear explosions in May 1998 have introduced an altogether new factor into their relationship. Nuclear deterrence rests on a mixture of accommodation and reassurance, besides the threat of condign punishment. A dialogue is necessary consequently to convey this accommodation and reassurance. Second, the compulsions that led India and Pakistan to reach Agra have not disappeared. They comprised American pressure to initiate bilateral talks on issues including Kashmir; Pakistan's increasing economic distress and growing dependency on the international financial institutions; the need for the NDA Government to divert attention from its recurring failures of governance; and the reality that Pakistan's and India's respective Kashmir policies are going nowhere. Indeed, Pakistan's support to cross-border terrorism has beggared its economy and isolated it within the international system. India's investment of blood and treasure in Kashmir has also not yielded any positive solution.

Before the dialogue resumes, India and Pakistan should usefully introspect on the reasons underlying the Agra summit's failure and derive appropriate lessons from their own experience.

(The writer is Director, Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, New Delhi)

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