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Sparring at SAARC
By C. Raja Mohan
KATHMANDU, JAN. 5. India was not surprised at the dramatic public relations exercise by the President of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, at the Summit of the South Asian leaders here today. India was indeed expecting some move by the General and was prepared to respond quickly.
Having come here with the determination not to engage Gen. Musharraf in substantive conversation but remain civil in the multilateral setting, the aides of Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, had worked out their plans. Having been outmanoeuvred on the propaganda front at Agra, Mr. Vajpayee's advisers were taking no chances this time around.
After Gen. Musharraf's gesture of walking up to Mr. Vajpayee and shaking hands with him during the opening ceremony that got a big applause, there was huge suspense in the King Birendra Convention Centre on the likely reaction from the Indian delegation.
The impassive Mr. Vajpayee walked off the dais to come back in a few minutes. It was the first signal that something was cooking. Meanwhile the External Affairs Minister, Jaswant Singh, and the National Security Adviser, Brajesh Mishra, consulted each other and came up with an additional paragaraph to be incorporated at the end of Mr. Vajpayee's speech. An official of the Prime Minister's office then took it to the dais and gave it to Mr. Vajpayee.
The public sparring between the two leaders brought the somewhat tedious proceedings of the opening ceremony alive. It also pointed to the shadow of Indo-Pak. rivalry over the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation. If SAARC has to be more than a mere theatre for the spectacle of Indo-Pak tensions, it will have to look for a strategy that will bypass Pakistan in the efforts to deepen regional economic integration.
India began to lay the basis for that different future, when Mr. Vajpayee today strongly supported the plans for sub-regional cooperation within the SAARC framework. He proposed a meeting at the ministerial level to take up projects for the ``growth quadrangle'' involving India, Bhutan, Nepal and Bangladesh.
Mr. Vajpayee also made a reference to the special trade requirements of least developed countries in the SAARC. Pointing to the Bangladeshi demand for duty-free access of its goods to the Indian market, Mr. Vajpayee said India will ``consider further concessional duty regimes'' for products from these nations.
Last evening in his meeting with the Bangladesh Prime Minister, Khaleda Zia, Mr. Vajpayee had promised to take up the question of duty-free access to 25 exportable items from the eastern neighbour. And that should eventually help India move towards negotiations on a billateral free trade treaty with Bangladesh.
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India is going out of the way to show that it will not take sides in the war of the women in Bangladesh. Mr. Vajpayee has been consistently signalling in the last few months that he is ready to do business with Begum Zia of the Bangladesh National Party who ousted Sheikh Hasina of the Awami League in the last parliamentary elections. In Bangladesh, India has been accused of being pro-Hasina.
Mr. Vajpayee has something to share with Begum Zia on how to deal with bad knees. Begum Zia who suffers from arthritic knees was apparently enquiring from Mr. Vajpayee on how effective the operations to replace his knees have been.
The outgoing Chairman of the SAARC, Chandrika Kumaratunga, was true to form today, when she arrived more than 20 minutes late to the opening ceremony. The Sri Lankan President is notorious for not keeping time; and today was no exception.
Her speech was the lengthiest and had an expanded discussion on terrorism, including a quotation from, of all the people, Leon Trotsky. It is not often that world leaders today quote from Trotsky, one of the leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia early last century.
Her strong words condemning terrorism should have pleased India. But Ms. Kumaratunga also delved in some detail on the question of addressing the ``root causes'' that underlie the rise of violence and extremism throughout the subcontinent. And that was music to the ears of Gen. Musharraf.
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