Talking needs stamina

The first expectation from the people of the subcontinent is that both delegations will show a degree of stamina that their predecessors didn’t. If solving our problems is important to both countries, it would seem appropriate that both the ministries of external affairs stay with the task for some time. The past record provides a contrast. We spent 48 hours trying at Tashkent, 72 hours at Shimla, 36 hours on the first military CBMs in 1991 and 12-24 hours on the foreign secretary talks in 1997 that set out the agenda of the eight subjects that constitute the composite dialogue. Against these hit and run episodes, the US and USSR spent two years over the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT 1) and four years concluding SALT II. In Europe, NATO and the Warsaw Pact bloc spent 15 years over Conventional Forces Europe, and the shortest negotiating period in western arms control history in the last 50 years is the Dayton Accord which took almost 350 hours spread out over 20 days. It is clear that India and Pakistan, or rather their diplomats, have invested precious little time on diplomacy so far. This must change.

It won’t be easy fielding a team that can negotiate for nine months or a couple of years. It is well known in all embassies that the MEA in New Delhi is probably the smallest ministry in the Central government, if one removes peripheral departments like the training institute and ICCR. The foreign secretary talks will flesh out substantially what they had agreed upon in 1997 — that the foreign secretaries themselves would negotiate the first two of the eight subjects: peace and security, including CBMs, and Jammu and Kashmir. The two would also “coordinate and monitor” the remaining six disputes: Siachen, Wullar Barrage, Sir Creek, terrorism and drug trafficking, economic and commercial cooperation and promotion of friendly exchanges in various fields. This “coordinate and monitor” framework is what the problem is all about. Certainly, the foreign secretaries can coordinate and monitor the remaining subjects if the talks last the usual 24 or 48 hours. No single human being can coordinate and monitor eight bitter disputes, if the discussion are taken to their logical conclusion over six months.

Considering the complexity and bitterness of the Kashmir dispute alone, it would be naive to imagine that any working agreement can be worked out in less than six months. Given the number of parties involved — like the MEA, Intelligence, Army, MHA, State Government, BSF, Customs, Survey of India, MOD, Air Force — we should be looking at a 10-man delegation and be prepared to invest 60 man months spread out over two cities, say, Islamabad and New Delhi. The negotiating team would need the back-up of another 16 or 24 officers in various departments and this effort is required for just one subject. Either we do it this way or we lapse back into our old South Asian tennis singles matches — four hours at the most.

The problem of mustering the requisite stamina is linked to another difficulty, that of finding the right people to negotiate. Additional and joint secretaries are perfectly competent people, but no serving bureaucrat is going to be in a position to bargain on behalf of his country, neither in India nor in Pakistan. Both countries have to pack their delegations with retired foreign secretaries, retired ambassadors, academics, strategic analysts and retired military officers, all of whom have the knowledge, credibility and maturity to give and take. The US delegation to negotiate the tough SALT 1 was led by an ambassador (Smith) assisted by an ex-navy secretary (Nitze), further assisted by a retired ambassador to the USSR (Llewellyn). The other members were the representative, JCS, deputy director of ACDA, the commissioner to the standing consultative committee, representative, CIA, an arms control academic expert, counsel for the Congress, and counsel for ACDA. They were backed up in Washington by more than 30 people. The reason for fielding so many heavyweights becomes clear when one looks at the duration for which the talks were held. The venue alternated between Vienna and Moscow and the meetings were actually convened on an average for about 220 to 300 days in the year. The delegations went back to their capitals for the remaining time for debriefing and recalculations. India and Pakistan need to approach the next round of talks with the same level of seriousness. If Indians plan on such a strategy they need to tell the Pakistanis so that they can get their act together.

Having come this far and so close to talks in a revolutionarily different way, can New Delhi and Islamabad invest heavily in these talks, with time and people, so that we don’t conduct the next round in the same frivolous manner as Shimla or Agra?