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By P.S. Suryanarayana
In an exclusive interview to The Hindu here today, he maintained that the final document of the 13th NAM summit, which concluded here on Tuesday night, had enshrined Pakistan's position on self-determination. Explaining that the summit was marked by a total absence of any reference to Kashmir by any of the assembled leaders, except by the Pakistan President and the Indian Prime Minister in their respective speeches, Mr. Kasuri said, "We didn't come (here) with a negative agenda to use (this NAM summit) as an extended OIC conference (of Muslim countries)." For Pakistan, the NAM summit "was not the forum for asking every country (to) vote `yes' or `no' on Kashmir. There will be other forums, the United Nations, the OIC." The Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), which held informal consultations here today, turned the spotlight on the escalating situation in Iraq. Mr. Kasuri said the Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf, told the OIC session that the Kashmir issue should also be viewed in the context of Palestine. When told that Kashmir and Palestine were not at all comparable, Mr. Kasuri said, "This was not an official meeting (of the OIC). As the OIC has repeatedly supported us on Kashmir, we don't have to go to them every time." More important, in his view, was Paragraph 106 of the NAM summit's final document. He drew attention to the line that the NAM "rejected recent attempts to equate the legitimate struggle of peoples, under colonial or alien domination and foreign occupation, for self-determination and national liberation... with terrorism in order to prolong occupation and oppression of the innocent people with impunity". This para, he asserted "is India-specific as far as we are concerned". On the counter-point that the reference to self-determination should be seen in the larger context of truly voluntary movements, without any external instigation, against any given state, Mr. Kasuri said, "My interpretation is that India's efforts (to keep Kashmir out of the NAM's final document) have been rejected." The NAM is "not the arena for India while talking of Kashmir". Asked why Pakistan had, at the summit, urged a non-selective implementation of all United Nations resolutions, when the relevant Security Council resolutions on Jammu and Kashmir were not enforceable under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, he took the line that "as far as moral sanctity is concerned, there is no difference" between this Chapter and Chapter VI, under which the resolutions of Pakistan's enlightened self-interest were adopted. The only "real difference is (that) force is used" under Chapter VII "when big powers want force to be used" under the U.N. auspices against any state(s), he contended. More importantly, he said, "The international community has a voice... has a conscience." About half the states represented at the NAM summit here were "created on the basis of self-determination", he said, arguing that the Indian delegation "made a grave tactical error" in trying to "use the NAM as a forum" to beat Pakistan with the terrorism-stick. India's "tactic" of invoking the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. and of maintaining that no cause would justify terrorism "did not sell" at this meeting in the specific context of an Indian-Pakistan tussle. The NAM was "not the European Union" where the resonance of the 9/11 fall-out was perhaps evocative from an Indian perspective. Pakistan wanted the NAM to serve as "a spokesman for the poorer countries". This might be realised only if the grouping could be revitalised. So, Gen. Musharraf had proposed that there be a "mechanism for conflict-resolution" within the forum. Asked whether this was only an idea that had not taken off along any trajectory at the summit, he said "it is an idea" on which there could be further discussions. About Gen. Musharraf's compulsions at this stage in equating India, almost provocatively, with countries or entities that virtually found themselves outside the margins of the international community, he contended that such a "verbal comparison" should be seen in the context of an Indian Minister's recent assertion that Pakistan could be decimated in the event of a nuclear war, whatever might have been the perceived context for such a view from New Delhi. Mr. Kasuri clarified that Pakistan's "right of reply", presented to the NAM here on Tuesday, should be seen as the delegation's statement and not as Gen. Musharraf's. (A Pakistani official had earlier indicated that the "right of reply", which was handed to the NAM Chair for circulation among the member-states, could be construed as the Pakistan President's remarks).
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