Now, over to New York

By C. Raja Mohan

NEW DELHI, AUG. 26. The Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, today signalled his determination to sustain the engagement with Pakistan at the highest political level despite the scepticism within the Government, his party and the Opposition.

Mr. Vajpayee now wants to pick up the threads of the unfinished conversation with Gen. Pervez Musharraf at Agra. Mid- town Manhattan has very little in common with the city of love the Mughals built; but it will be the venue of a challenging process that began at Agra.

During the last four weeks, the Foreign Office was playing a ``diplomatic hide-and-seek'' on whether Mr. Vajpayee would meet Gen. Musharraf on the sidelines of the annual autumn session of the United Nations General Assembly.

At a press conference in Lucknow today, Mr. Vajpayee confirmed he was going to meet Gen. Musharraf in New York. Both the leaders would be there around the same time - during the third and fourth weeks of September.

In making that announcement, Mr. Vajpayee was being true to form - ``staying ahead of the bureaucratic establishment on defining India's Pakistan policy. When India went through an exhaustive and divisive domestic debate on the handling of the Agra summit, Mr. Vajpayee refused to lose faith in his ability to make a difference to India-Pakistan relations. As words flew thick and fast in Parliament over the Government's management of the talks in Agra, there was deep concern in Pakistan that India was no longer interested in a meeting between the two leaders at New York.

There was almost a sense of resignation that like last year, India might go out of the way to avoid seeing Gen. Musharraf in the corridors of the United Nations. Mr. Vajpayee would have none of that oneupmanship this time round.

The first signs of a possible meeting between the two leaders came when the visiting Pakistan Commerce Minister, Mr. Abdul Razzak Dawood, called on Mr. Vajpayee on Thursday last.

This was the first political contact between the two sides since Agra, and the fact that Mr. Vajpayee chose to receive Mr. Dawood suggested India was keen on sustaining the high-level engagement.

The political contact on Thursday was followed by a meeting between the Foreign Secretary, Ms. Chokila Iyer, and the Pakistan High Commissioner, Mr. Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, here on Friday. All evidence was now turning out to be positive.

If there were any doubts left on the meeting with Gen. Musharraf in New York, Mr. Vajpayee dispelled them today.

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