Towards a fast track of parleys?

SUSTAINING THE MYSTIQUE of summit-level talks, the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, has rightly decided to meet Pakistan's President and Chief Executive, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, on the sidelines of the annual session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York next month. At the least, Mr. Vajpayee may have now succeeded in snuffing out some truly dispiriting doubts over his willingness to engage Gen. Musharraf in a quick sequel to their only summit that took place at Agra last month. As a prelude to the latest announcement, the Prime Minister actually appeared to have availed himself of a parliamentary debate earlier this month to keep the window of opportunity open for incremental talks with the Pakistani leader. Relevant to this continuum of optimism was Mr. Vajpayee's disclosure that a ``framework'' for future bilateral dialogue had indeed been agreed upon at the Agra summit itself. Therefore, the question now is whether this unspecified ``framework'' will serve as the guidepost for next month's meeting in New York. Normatively, bilateral meetings on the margins of multilateral conferences often tend to lack the high drama, as different from the compulsive purposiveness, of a fullscope summit between the two parties concerned. It surely bears emphasis that Mr. Vajpayee and Gen. Musharraf cannot afford the grand luxury of a mere photo-op summit in New York. The dynamics of the recent Agra event, whatever its controversies, cannot brook a superficial or stylised engagement in the imposing confines or shadows of the U.N. headquarters. Moreover, the two leaders can also look forward to further talks on the sidelines of a prospective South Asian summit besides a plenary bilateral meeting in Pakistan, not necessarily in that order though.

Within the Indian camp, the Prime Minister seems to have been somewhat alone in wishing to give dialogue a chance within the parameters of an engagement with a military ruler of Pakistan at this juncture. To recognise this is not to overlook the negative consequences of the several impatient and impetuous comments that Mr. Vajpayee has flung at Gen. Musharraf since their diplomatic encounter at Agra. Pakistan, too, has variously indicated its displeasure with India in the post-Agra milieu. No meaningful bilateral purpose will, therefore, be served by any further shadow-boxing over the missed opportunities of the Agra summit. It is an elementary requirement that both sides begin to concentrate on the basics of a complex bilateral relationship.

The more obvious basics pertain to the Kashmir dispute, the related issue of Islamabad-inspired cross-border terrorism inside India, confidence-building measures in respect of the nuclear as also conventional military profiles of the two parties and economic cooperation. Nor do the two countries lack the benefit of some basic principles as already enshrined in the Lahore Declaration and the related papers of 1999 as also the Shimla Agreement of 1972 besides a few other bilateral documents. Now, the bilateral spirit may only be undermined by a move, however tentative, on the part of Gen. Musharraf's administration to discount the Shimla Accord as an unequal document rooted in India's advantages of 1972 and to make light of the Lahore Declaration. Mr. Vajpayee, too, should take care to avoid treating Gen. Musharraf as an unequal interlocutor especially when the Pakistani leader is seen by New Delhi to possess the means to make a difference to India's comfort level in Jammu and Kashmir. The New York talks next month should be suffused with the constructive spirit of the engagement at Agra where the two leaders seemed to have evaluated the possibility of simultaneous discussions on Kashmir and cross-border terrorism.

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