Today, in Islamabad

With the SAARC summit now resolutely underway, it is entirely understandable that the focus is four-square on India-Pakistan relations. In Fortress Islamabad, its borders sealed and its alleyways turned over to commandos during the multilateral gathering, it may strike some as unfortunate that real, tangible progress on free trade and terrorism often appears to be the sideshow. Therein lies the challenge for the two leaderships. The two countries so dominate the South Asian region that a forum like SAARC cannot summon the critical goodwill to deliver on its charter if they do not strengthen the latticework for cooperation and consensus with a modicum of bilateral understanding. In the past, all the well-meaning rhetoric at SAARC meets has amounted to little with India and Pakistan reverting thereafter to suspicion and hostility. This time it could be different. This time around in Islamabad 2004, even the pessimists are cautiously optimistic.

That optimism could be ascribed to gathering hopes that India and Pakistan are navigating a calibrated but firm road towards normalisation. In a pre-summit interview with Dawn, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee enumerated four factors that were guiding the two countries towards peace: popular sentiment, the imperative for close economic cooperation in globalised times, the realisation that it is mutually beneficial to the national interests of both, and the need to own responsibility for improving ties. Ever since he held out the hand of friendship in his now famous speech in Srinagar on April 18, Vajpayee has given every indication that this peace initiative will not be concentrated on one summit, one pappi-jhappi meeting with his Pakistani counterpart. In recent months, instead, the architecture of normalisation has been gradually put together. Swaps of parliamentarian delegations, resurrection of the respective high commissions to slow semblance of their old strength and status, resumption of air, road and rail connections, even the promise of new routes between Sindh and Rajasthan as well as Srinagar and Muzaffarabad, and finally the ceasefire on the Line of Control.

In effect, by patiently staying with the peace initiative, by ironing out the folds one by one, Vajpayee and his colleagues and their counterparts have imbued the outlook for SAARC and Indo-Pak peace with a hopeful realism. In doing so, the prime minister has enlarged the centre ground between rabid jingoism and loopy peacenikism. In doing so he has given peace and SAARC a chance.