The Hindu : Vajpayee: third time lucky?

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Thursday, Apr 24, 2003

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Vajpayee: third time lucky?

By C. Raja Mohan

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.

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 U.S. and the U.K. 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.

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