Foreign Secretaries of India and Pakistan are likely to get down this weekend to a comprehensive review of the agenda on Kashmir, peace and security, including radical confidence-building measures such as starting a bus from Srinagar to Muzaffarabad across the Line of Control. A mood of enormous expectation from both sides will greet Foreign Secretary Shashank and Riaz Khokhar as well as Foreign Secretary-designate Shyam Saran when they sit across the table in Hyderabad House for their first meeting in six years on June 27-28 on the composite dialogue process. While the two sides will pick up from where they left in October 1998, months after their tit-for-tat nuclear tests, they will crucially focus on the January joint statement in Islamabad which mandated both sides to reciprocally end hostility and violence and begin a serious conversation on Kashmir. With the Congress government determined to take the peace process forward in new, creative ways, just as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh underlined in his address to the nation this evening, the Indian side seems all set to revive the idea of running a bus across the LoC from one side of Kashmir to another. ‘‘We will actively pursue the composite dialogue with Pakistan,’’ Singh said, adding, ‘‘We are sincere about discussing and resolving all issues, including Jammu and Kashmir. We recognise that resolution of major issues requires national consensus and accommodation of public sentiment in both countries. It is self-evident that terrorism and violence would cast a dark shadow over this process.’’ Coming in the wake of the first successful meeting between India and Pakistan on nuclear CBMs, the PM’s allusion today to ‘‘terrorism and violence (casting) a dark shadow’’ is a warning to Islamabad that New Delhi’s willingness to explore new solutions to the old problem of Kashmir will come to naught if Pakistan-sponsored violence continues. Armed with agreement from the Mufti Mohammed Sayeed government in Srinagar, New Delhi believes that ‘‘bridging the LoC with human traffic’’ constitutes one of the greatest confidence-building measures between India and Pakistan. The Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus, the Centre believes, is a manifestation of this desire. Interestingly, the sense in New Delhi on the eve of the FS talks is that Islamabad hardly wants to be accused internationally of being the ‘‘saboteur’’ of the Kashmir peace process, especially when its publicly stated approach is to take the ‘‘wishes of the Kashmiri people’’ also into account. Under the circumstances, and especially after the secret conversation between National Security Advisor J N Dixit and his Pakistani counterpart Tariq Aziz, the Pakistani side may well agree to restarting the bus talks as a confidence-building measure. New Delhi is likely to keep its argument simple: You cannot begin to have a resolution of the Kashmir ‘‘dispute’’, that has defied both dogma and imagination for the last 57 years, if Kashmiris on both sides are not involved in the matter. It also seems as if the Indian side is willing to look at pathbreaking new initiatives in the future, if the step-by-step ‘‘process’’ of the Kashmir talks goes well, beginning this weekend. According to one view, that is especially prevalent in the Valley, Kashmiri passengers on the bus could be given travel identity papers that are stamped in Srinagar by the deputy commissioner, while the same is done on the other side in Muzaffarabad. Such a procedure was in existence till 1953, when it came to an abrupt end after relations deteriorated between India and Pakistan. To give credit to the Vajpayee government, none of these ideas are radically new — except the Congress government seems determined to implement them. The idea of ‘‘identity travel documents’’, floated by Vajpayee’s PMO, was shot down by the ministries of Home and External Affairs. New Delhi was then determined that ‘‘passports and visas’’ be given to all passengers on the cross-LoC bus, a move that would certainly have been a non-starter, considering Islamabad would have seen through the ruse of ‘‘quietly’’ transforming the LoC into a ‘‘soft border.’’ It never came to that, however. As a newspaper reported last week, Islamabad refused to give visas to three Kashmiri officials for the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad technical-level talks in April, presumably because they were Kashmiri. As a result, the Indian side decided to call off the visit altogether.
