Opinion - Editorials

Cold-shouldering peace

THE PREDICTABLY NEGATIVE response of the Vajpayee administration to the latest peace overture by the Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf, suggests an absence of creativity in its diplomatic thinking. New Delhi's stony attitude is bad enough, surely, as a baffling sign of inept public diplomacy. Much worse, in fact, is official India's unwise inflexibility as policy towards Pakistan. Now, Gen. Musharraf's new initiative is undeniably a question of subtle timing rather than anything intrinsically innovative. Yet, the truth is that there can be no forward movement towards the normalisation of India-Pakistan relations without a de-escalation of the present warlike tensions on the bilateral front. It is this aspect that Gen. Musharraf has deftly invoked while inaugurating a South Asian conference of Information Ministers in Islamabad on Thursday. At a basic level, New Delhi seems angry that he should have utilised a forum of the seven-nation South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation to articulate a formula to ease the escalating estrangement between India and Pakistan. In taking a dim view of this development, New Delhi is allowing itself to be guided by a blinkered vision of the technicality that the SAARC Charter prohibits any discussion of contentious bilateral issues. Lost sight of in the process is the substance of Gen. Musharraf's offer.

Given the abnormally high tensions along the India-Pakistan frontier since the savage terrorist attack on Parliament House in New Delhi on December 13, Gen. Musharraf appears to have outlined his proposals in a noticeably non-provocative style. One of his suggestions, aimed at reviving the languishing people-to-people contacts on the margins at least of the bilateral front, relates to Pakistan's stated readiness to restore air links between the two countries on a quick and reciprocal basis. In a sense, it is quite natural that the Pakistan President should have called for the restoration of flight paths whose absence had forced the SAARC Ministers, including India's Sushma Swaraj, to take time-consuming alternative routes to reach Islamabad. The air transportation links in question were suspended in tit-for-tat decisions in the context of the terrorist strike on India's Parliament House.

New Delhi has often found itself dismayed over what it tends to regard as Gen. Musharraf's penchant for designer diplomacy. But the Vajpayee administration should know that the gravity of the current India-Pakistan standoff brooks no complacency on any count, real or imaginary. Anchored to the unexceptionable idea of a cohesive SAARC is Gen. Musharraf's call for reciprocal withdrawals of troops from strike-threatening forward locations along the India-Pakistan border. In his reckoning, "both sides have the potential to indulge in adventurism". While this underscores the need for a military de-escalation by the two countries, he thinks that the pullback itself can be accomplished only through "mutual understanding". New Delhi's response is a waffle in the form of Ms. Swaraj's flat insistence that the ground situation remains unchanged. Within the past several weeks, the Vajpayee administration has consistently cold-shouldered all well-meaning calls from within India itself for a military de-escalation. Although New Delhi deployed military forces within striking distance of Pakistan in the wake of the outrage on December 13, several factors emphasise the need for an Indian pullback that might lead to a matching demobilisation by Pakistan. It is heartless to play a chess-game of "coercive diplomacy" by keeping troops in battle-readiness for long. A complete stoppage of cross-border terrorism from Pakistan — a stated objective of India's military deployment — is a qualitative index that will take considerable time to measure. The way forward is to de-escalate and re-engage Pakistan, given Gen. Musharraf's reported willingness to respond. His strategic moves are being watched by the international community, and this is a factor that New Delhi should not ignore.

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