Vajpayee8217;s tough talk

The distinct hardening of the Vajpayee government's tone on Kargil prior to a date being proposed for Pakistan's Foreign Min-ister to vis...

The distinct hardening of the Vajpayee government8217;s tone on Kargil prior to a date being proposed for Pakistan8217;s Foreign Min-ister to visit New Delhi is clearly intended to constrict Islamabad8217;s scope for diplomatic manoeuvre. But it is not evident that several other implications, political and military, of the new hardline the government is adopting have been thought through fully.

Although it has taken almost a fortnight after IAF airstrikes began for the government to do so, it has now in a dramatic shift dropped all pretense about the limited degree of the Pakistan government and army8217;s involvement in the Kargil-Drass-Batalik sectors. On Monday both the Prime Minister in his address to the nation and official Ministry of Defence briefings were deliberately unequivocal about the nature of the intrusions. They are being viewed as a well-planned operation by the Pakistani army on the lines of and with similar objectives to the one that occurred in 1948.

At one level it can be seen that this newcharacterisation of the conflict is necessitated by Islamabad8217;s attempt to distance itself from the infiltrators and to describe them as freedom-fighters. Left at that, Islamabad8217;s representative Sartaj Aziz would have arrived in New Delhi claiming its hands were clean and its concern to broker peace. Such duplicity has to be exposed and any attempt to reopen negotiations on the LoC countered. The government has gone a good deal further.

It is pinning Islamabad down to a one-point talks agenda: as Vajpayee said Pakistan must discuss the intrusions and how it proposes to undo them and nothing else. In short, India is virtually demanding that Islamabad admit its culpability before the diplomatic process can go forward.

It is unclear what precisely has brought the government to the decision to block diplomatic exits and withdraw face-saving measures it had earlier seemed to offer Islamabad. One reason could well be the severe domestic reaction, especially in the security establishment, to what appeared to bea hesitant, indecisive stance with loose talk of a safe passage and of the Pakistani army acting on its own without political direction.

Talking tough may make up for those lapses. But the fashion in which the government is doing it runs the risk of scuttling the diplomatic process even though it has hitherto recognised wisely that it is essential to exercise both military and diplomatic options to the fullest extent. On the other hand, taking a hardline may have been unavoidable given that the army, according to a spokesman on Monday, has received fresh and reliable information about the Pakistan army8217;s role in Kargil.

If accurate, that fact gives a whole new complexion to the Kargil situation and a political and military reassessment of the scenario becomes urgent. The Pakistani army8217;s capacity for mischief along the border as also its propensity for stirring up trouble within Jammu and Kashmir should not be underestimated. Its endgame must be assumed to go beyond occupying border territory and cuttingoff Siachen and Leh. If, as all this indicates, a new stage in the conflict has been reached, the government must immediately seek a political consensus on its future course of action.