It takes two to tango

Islamabad has better chances now because of the BJP8217;s anxiety to efface its image of being anti-Pakistan and anti-Muslim. Isolated as it is on nuclear tests, the party is looking for credibility. Nothing could help as much as a breakthrough with Pakistan and Vajpayee government may well be prepared to go more than half way to make the point that the BJP is not a retrogressive, backward-looking party. Alas, there are no takers for this 8212; either in Pakistan, or in India, or indeed within the BJP.

Vajpayee was sincere in his offer of a dialogue when he told Parliament the other day that he wanted a 8220;secure and prosperous Pakistan8221;. His letter to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was still more effusive: India and Pakistan should not be 8220;prisoners of old contentions8221; and must 8220;think of the welfare of our children8221;. But some statements by Delhi after the nuclear tests were so jingoistic that the Pakistanis put no faith in Vajpayee8217;s words. Thebomb has more or less destroyed in Pakistan the growing lobbying for improved ties with New Delhi.

8220;What kind of people are they?8221; Nawaz Sharif inquired, referring to the BJP leaders, when he phoned former Prime Minister, Inder Gujral, the other day. Nawaz Sharif told him that he was compelled to hold tests and sought Gujral8217;s help on the further course of action. Gujral met Vajpayee. India8217;s offer for talks came soon after this. Islamabad should have pursued it.

But Foreign Minister Gohar Ayub Khan, Pakistan8217;s Advani, has spoilt the atmosphere by saying that there would be 8220;no talks8221; until a third party was associated with them. He has banged the door shut at a time when the BJP is looking hard for a formula to break the impasse. Pakistan has retrieved the situation a bit by suggesting talks at the level of foreign secretaries. But talks on Kashmir alone will not do.

However emphatically Islamabad maintains that solving the core issue of Kashmir will settle differences, the matter is not so simple.New Delhi8217;s belief, as Nehru had said, is that Kashmir is a symptom, not the disease; and the disease is Pakistan8217;s hate-India policy. Even if Kashmir was presented to Pakistan on a platter, Nehru observed, it would think of some other issue to keep its hatred for India alive, for only in that had it found its ethos.

Pakistan has not realised that with partition, the two-nation theory has run its course. To claim the Muslim-majority Kashmir on the basis of two-nation theory is fraught with danger, something that Islamabad refuses to face. Terrorist attacks by militants trained in Pakistan, like the one that Doda witnessed recently, set the normalisation process back drastically. There is no other option but to talk 8212; a course that the two countries have not pursued diligently enough. In the last 50 years since partition, there were not more than a couple of occasions when both sat across the table and tried to sort out pending problems, including Jamp;K. In 1963, then foreign ministers, Swaran Singh andZulfikar Ali Bhutto, held six rounds of talks over six months, without success.

Nine years later, there was a serious attempt to solve Kashmir at Shimla in 1972. But Bhutto had just come to power after the traumatic experience of Bangladesh war and loss of East Pakistan. As he told Prime Minister Indira Gandhi at Shimla that he was not in a position to discuss Kashmir because the whole peace agreement would be suspect in the eyes of the Pakistanis.

8220;My back is to the wall; I can8217;t make any more concessions,8221; Bhutto had said. He suggested that the discussion on Kashmir be postponed. 8220;Why hurry on these matters? I think haste sometimes ruins these problems.8221;

Some concrete proposals were discussed at Shimla, including converting the line of control into an international border. Some say Bhutto gave an undertaking to this effect. This may have been the case. He was under pressure because India held at that time 90,000 prisoners and a great deal of Pakistani territory. His main argument was thatPakistan had to take into account its public position on Kashmir and that he should not be asked to 8220;negotiate8221; Kashmir 8220;here and now8221;. He would not yet be able to 8220;sell8221; any formula that might be found. Nothing concrete emerged at Shimla except the principle of a bilateral approach to the problem. It meant that neither India nor Pakistan would raise Kashmir in any international forum. Islamabad observed the agreement more in the breach than in the practice.

It is difficult to understand why Islamabad insists on third party intervention on Kashmir when the two countries themselves have not made a serious attempt to talk about it in the last 26 years. At last year8217;s SAARC summit at Male, the two countries looked like crossing the hurdle when Prime Minister Inder Gujral and Nawaz Sharif had met. But when foreign secretaries held their meetings subsequently, they hardly scratched the surface.

What the hostility between India and Pakistan reflects is a mind-set. It does not call for outsideintervention. It demands that the two must break with the past and start afresh. Third party involvement just would not work. No proposal or formula can be imposed on an unwilling country. Ultimately, the two sides have to arrive at some solution on their own.

I recall Bhutto telling me in Rawalpindi before the Shimla Agreement that he was 8220;sick of going to world chanceries8221;. In fact, the reason why he agreed to the principle of bilateral talks was his exasperation over the attitude of foreign powers, which are now trying to put a finger in the pie. The sooner Islamabad realises this, the better for Pakistan-India relations.