The Renewed Talk of Indo-Pakistan
Talks
Will the Indian PM be Lucky the
Third Time?
By
C. Raja Mohan
THE
PRIME Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, has rolled the dice again
on Pakistan. Will he be lucky the third time? Twice before, in
February 1999 and July 2001, he made risky political moves to
engage the leadership of Pakistan. Both those efforts came to
nothing.
But
convinced that he can make a difference to Indo-Pakistan relations,
Mr. Vajpayee wants to have another shot at a peace process with
Islamabad. His initiative to reopen the dialogue with Pakistan
has not come a day too soon. The diplomatic returns from the refusal
to engage Pakistan since Agra have been diminishing. New Delhi's
negative posturing has robbed Indian policy of all initiative
and has vitiated the political atmosphere. If Mr. Vajpayee has
to engage Pakistan again, he will have to do differently this
time to get it right.
One,
make it clear that the decision to once again extend the hand
of friendship to Pakistan at Srinagar last week was not a mere
tactical ploy to gain some diplomatic space. In any context, it
does not take long for the rest of the world to see through propaganda
proposals. Mr. Vajpayee has the political credibility, based on
his record of the last five years, to insist that India is looking
for a dialogue aimed at the full normalisation of bilateral relations
with Pakistan and that it is prepared for serious negotiations
to resolve the long-festering Kashmir question.
Having
made a serious offer, Mr. Vajpayee should not allow it to be sunk
amidst suspicions from across the border and carping from within.
Having decided to renew talks with Pakistan, Mr. Vajpayee needs
to take every effort to make them happen.
Two,
avoid negotiating from the top. Given the experience at the Agra
Summit, Mr. Vajpayee should focus this time on an extended dialogue
at the functional level. Summits are useful to nudge the process
along. But they cannot be occasions for high-risk negotiations.
In
the past, India either sought high profile result-oriented summits
when the political mood was generous or avoided even eye contact
with Pakistani leaders in multilateral settings when the attitude
soured. India should try and make summitry with Pakistan a routine
affair. It should also not be difficult for the two leaders to
frequently pick up the telephone and talk. Constant communication
should help prepare public opinion in both countries for a long-term
engagement and bring down expectations of dramatic results at
every meeting.
Three,
while routinising Indo-Pakistan summit meetings, it will be unwise
to leave it all to the foreign offices to come up with answers
to the many issues that confront bilateral relations. Without
a serious political mandate, the conservative foreign offices
on both sides can produce a deadlock in no time and declare talks
unproductive.
Indian
and Pakistani political leaders have always maintained informal
lines of contact and back channels of communications. It is only
in the last couple of years that these contacts have dried up.
Wider interaction and expansive public diplomacy are also necessary
to generate public support for the agreements that will have to
be negotiated in the coming months.
Four,
revive normal diplomatic business at the earliest opportunity.
Sending India's High Commissioner back to Pakistan and reopening
air and land transportation links are important steps in creating
a favourable environment for successful talks. India must also
end the current policy of deliberate discouragement of people-to-people
contact between the two nations. Contrary to the reigning wisdom,
expansive interaction between the two civil societies is likely
to create better conditions for the resolution of difficult issues.
Five,
focus on problem-solving rather than merely defend cliched positions
of the past. Indo-Pakistan talks, on-again and off-again over
the last decade and a half, have covered considerable ground.
With a little bit of political will, agreements on some of the
outstanding issues such as the Siachen glacier can easily be clinched.
So can many new agreements on military and nuclear confidence-building
measures.
There
has been a tendency in the past on both sides to link agreements
on one set of issues with another. Instead, the two sides now
must move forward wherever they can, without waiting for progress
across the board. Incremental progress in bilateral relations
might create a better environment for the resolution of more difficult
issues.
Six,
while the focus must be on negotiated agreements, there are many
areas where India can act unilaterally to change the dynamic of
bilateral relations. On the eve of the Agra Summit, India had
proposed a number of steps for confidence-building between the
two nations. Some of them, for example tariff concessions and
opening Indian higher education institutions for Pakistani students,
can be implemented by New Delhi on its own. The best way to remove
the suspicion in Pakistan that these proposals were aimed at public
relations mileage is to actually open the door unilaterally.
Seven,
pursue aggressive economic diplomacy. While demanding economic
normalisation of relations, India has often chosen to forego opportunities
for commercial cooperation with Pakistan. The most notable examples
are the two proposed pipelines to supply natural gas to India
from Iran and Central Asia.
Creative
diplomacy by India at the South Asian Association for Regional
Cooperation (SAARC) on multilateral trade agreements, and diplomatic
pressure for a trilateral trade and transit treaty with Pakistan
and Afghanistan could draw substantive international support for
regional economic integration in the subcontinent.
Eight,
prevent slogans such as "internationalisation" and "third
party mediation" from clouding the negotiating process with
Pakistan. India will never agree, and rightly so, to set up a
table for three when talking to Islamabad. But there is no need
to keep the international community, which has begun to take an
extraordinary interest in the normalisation of Indo-Pakistan relations,
completely out of the equation.
The
recent involvement of the international community has in fact
worked in India's favour — for example in conferring legitimacy
to the recent elections in Jammu and Kashmir and putting some
pressure on Pakistan to end cross-border terrorism. Rather than
be paralysed by the fear of "internationalisation",
India must actively mobilise global pressure on Pakistan to change
its ways.
Nine,
what about the core issues of Kashmir and cross-border terrorism?
If Pakistan does not make a significant move towards a substantive
reduction of cross-border terrorism, the peace process is unlikely
to take off. Equally important will be the attitude of the international
community towards Pakistan's sponsorship of cross-border violence.
If the US and the UK walk away from the assurances on Pakistan
ending its support to cross-border terrorism, they would be overseeing
the collapse of a potential opening between India and Pakistan
and a return to a crisis mode that we saw last summer.
The
political challenge for India lies in re-engaging Pakistan on
all issues, including the Kashmir question, while sustaining its
war on terrorism through a variety of ways. These could include
a range of steps from introducing new technology and military
tactics as well as maintaining international political pressure.
Mr.
Vajpayee has nothing to lose and everything to gain by reviving
the peace process in good faith. But the ball is in Pakistan's
court and it is up to the international community to end the perceived
double standards in relation to the war on terrorism. - Courtesy
The Hindu
