New York exchange

The dialogue of the deaf continues. If there had been widespread hopes in India that a firm beginning would be made at the UN General Assembly session towards a new global consensus on cross-border terrorism, Pakistan Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz8217;s stridently aggressive and India-centric outburst has certainly belied them. Not only are his words 8212; splattered as they are with misleading comparisons between Kashmir and East Timor 8212; devoid of any hint of a possible post-Kargil bilateral understanding, but his call for an international conference on a nuclearised South Asia is bound to provoke suspicion in India. This is unfortunate. The imperative to embark on confidence-building measures between two nuclear weaponised neighbours who share an ever volatile border cannot be overstated. But clearly, their leaderships have failed to locate any meeting ground.

The key question is, how are we to go about it? Is it to be a bilateral or a multilateral affair? New Delhi has all along insisted that its nuclearprogramme is not country-specific, and Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh has in New York once again linked disarmament to global strategic restraint. Aziz, on the other hand, would like to view the arms race merely in a South Asian framework, and his demands include an Indo-Pak balance between fissile material stockpiles. And so, while Singh makes a fervent plea to the nuclear powers to adhere to a no-first-use policy, Aziz charges that this is merely a ploy to justify India8217;s nuclear arsenal by making a case for a second-strike capability. In the process, the two foreign ministers have highlighted the potholed road towards nuclear containment. Gone are the Cold War days, when the somewhat inadequate MAD mutually assured destruction theory and a conveniently polarised world made limitation talks feasible. Now, a veritable domino effect prevails in identifying strategic concerns. If Pakistan looks eastwards at India, India would have another eye on China in the north, which in turn is ever conscious of threatsoffered by Taiwan and a perceptible Japanese nationalism. And on and on, round and round, it goes. Jaswant Singh is thus on a sound wicket when he argues that military restraint cannot be limited to region.

It is also important to note that Aziz8217;s attempt to evoke visions of a nuclear doomsday in the subcontinent is not quite in keeping with the reality. In his address to his nation after he bid his forces to retreat from Kargil, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief emphasised that since the region was now nuclearised, he and his Indian counterpart had kept in regular touch through the conflict. Yet, when Aziz waxes eloquent on the quot;hair-trigger security environmentquot; in the region, he would perhaps do well to dwell on the cause behind this turbulence: cross-border terrorism. Forget about its overt support to militant groups in Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan is yet to clarify its response to Osama bin Laden8217;s call for a jehad8217; against India.