Square up to perfidy

Though Pakistan has withdrawn most of its regular troops from the Kargil sector, some Pakistani troops remain in occupation of one or two posts in the Mushkoh Valley, in a last-ditch pretence to having resisted India. There are confirmed reports of long-term deployment of regular Pakistani troops across the Rajouri, Poonch and Kargil sectors of the Line of Control LoC. Attacks on Indian diplomatic personnel in Islamabad have increased. A new dimension of heightening tensions was the aggressive air reconnaissance mission undertaken by a Pakistani plane in the Kutch sector across the Sir Creek border on August 10. Our response in shooting down thataircraft is being utilised to arouse international recriminations against India.

These activities have to be assessed in the context of pronouncements by Pakistani authorities, post-Kargil, on Indo-Pak relations. A spokesman of the ISI, Brig Rashid, stated that, while some of the freedom fighters have withdrawn from the LoC, many of them might have moved on towards the Valley. Pakistan8217;s Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz doggedly stuck to the myth that there was no involvement by Pakistani armed forces in the Kargil conflict. He indulged in this spurious affirmation with the British Foreign Secretary in London on July 29 and 30. The Prime Minister of Pakistan has stated more than once, after his return from Washington, that the conflict in Kargil was the handiwork of quot;freedom fightersquot; and that Pakistan only backed the operation politically to refocus international attention on the Kashmir issue. Nawaz Sharif has claimed that he agreed to the withdrawal because he had achieved this objective and that the ball isnow in the court of India and the US to resolve the problem in a manner acceptable to Pakistan.

In his policy statement in the National Assembly on his Washington visit, Sharif clearly stated that Kargil was not the end of the story and that many more Kargils would occur if Pakistan8217;s aspirations regarding Kashmir were not fulfilled. He claimed that the aircraft was shot down in their airspace.

The possibility of a nuclear and missile confrontation has been woven into Pakistani arguments and advocacies to alarm and blackmail the international community. In this context, India faces two basic challenges in foreign policy and security terms. First, we have to cope with and respond to international pressure for resuming bilateral dialogue with Pakistan, which will increase during the meetings of the UN General Assembly from September onwards. Secondly, we have to counter Pakistani intrusion and subversion in a decisive manner without losing the credibility of our reasonableness and restraint establishedduring the Kargil confrontation. One must clearly understand Pakistan8217;s objectives and methods to achieve them.

The most important emerging reality we should be aware of is Pakistan8217;s plan to negative all the terms of reference of Indo-Pak ties established in Shimla in July 1972, on which many subsequent agreements and arrangements were based. Pakistan has questioned the political and cartographic validity of the LoC. It has declared the Agreement irrelevant and ineffective more than once. Pakistan has violated practically all the understandings and agreements and the confidence-building measures agreed upon in high-level discussions between December 1988 and February last, between the processes initiated by Rajiv Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto and Vajpayee8217;s visit to Lahore. The symbolic gesture of Vajpayee visiting Minar-e-Pakistan and declaring India8217;s firm commitment to Pakistan8217;s sovereignty, territorial integrity and stability was nullified by members of the Pakistani clergy washing the platform around theMinar with holy water8217; to cleanse it from pollution8217;.

The violation of our airspace in the Sir Creek area is the latest signal of Pakistan wishing to reopen the question of the boundary there by military means. These attitudes and activities lead to the conclusion that Pakistan has no desire to begin any serious process of normalisation with India.

Regardless of the passage of time, the overall strategic objective of Pakistan seems to remain as articulated by late Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in a memorandum to Field Marshal Ayub Khan in the mid-60s. Pakistan8217;s national survival and unity, said Bhutto, depended primarily on keeping India on the defensive and destabilising India. Apart from agitating bilateral issues like Kashmir, therefore, Pakistani policies against India should be closely coordinated with the Chinese and with other countries like Nepal even if the Chinese now have no such inclination. Pakistan should also endeavour to cut off the links of the Northeastern states from mainland India. Allthis, as Bhutto saw it, would ensure the erosion of Indian power, dismemberment of its territories and consolidation of an anti-Indian geostrategic nexus. Nuclear blackmail stands added to this objective.

That we have to resume some sort of a dialogue with Pakistan is axiomatic. That the international community is more concerned about nuclear adventurism than other predicaments that India faces due to Pakistani activities is also something which we should realise. The coming months will, thus, set a complex exercise for India 8212; that of remaining committed to a dialogue as also ready to counter Pakistani mischief with the necessary level of force.