Pakistan gains more from recent talks with India

K P Nayar

If Pakistan's foreign office were to organise a competition in diplomatic 'correctness' among its officers, two diplomats who would certainly make it to the finals are Ashraf Jahangir Qazi, Pakistan's high commissioner to India, and Tariq Altaf, additional secretary to its headquarters in Islamabad.

So, when Qazi and Altaf were seen in sportswear and open collar at Murree on the penultimate day of the India-Pakistan foreign secretary-level talks last weekend, it was immediately clear that there was more to their casual attire than any desire to get away from the summer heat of Islamabad and make the most of the 18-degree Celsius at the lush hill station.

Pakistan laid out the red carpet for the India team to the talks like it had never done in almost two decades -- not since Atal Bihari Vajpayee's stewardship of foreign policy in the Janata Party government raised genuine hopes of a new dawn in Indo-Pakistani relations. The Pakistanis, it was clear, wanted to atone for their misdemeanour in the past and charm their guests. And this they did gracefully both in Islamabad and in Murree.

If the foreign secretary-level talks had been delayed by another ten days, Salman Haider would have become the second Indian foreign secretary in succession to have held office without making a visit to Pakistan for bilateral talks.

But more than all that, they wanted to use the latest round of talks to charm the incoming foreign secretary, K Raghunath, who was part of the delegation. The Pakistanis are wary of Raghunath, just as they were wary of J N Dixit, who knocked the bottom out of Pakistan's foreign policy when he headed the South Block bureaucracy under P V Narasimha Rao's prime ministership.

Raghunath -- Pakistanis are uncomfortably aware -- undertook a difficult trip to Mazar-e-Sharif after Kabul fell to the Taliban last year and played a crucial role in creating the anti-Taliban northern alliance in Afghanistan. If Raghunath had the choice of making India's foreign policy, he would tirelessly work towards one objective: the sustained weakening and eventual disintegration of Pakistan. A diplomat with that kind of clarity and determination, the Pakistanis realise, is not to be trifled with, especially when it is anyone's guess as to how long the United Front government will stay in office.

The just-concluded round of foreign secretary-level talks was, however, not all form. For the first time since India and Pakistan started talking to each other again, there was substance in their dialogue. By agreeing to create eight working groups 'to address all outstanding issues of concern to both sides,' India extended the Gujral doctrine to cover these talks. New Delhi has very little to gain from the creation of these working groups, while the decision enables Pakistan to fulfil the Nawaz Sharief government's domestic and international agenda.

One of the working groups, for instance, will deal with Jammu and Kashmir and will be headed by the two foreign secretaries. Six other working groups will be headed by junior or middle-level officials. From Sharief's point of view, he has thus forced India to accept that Kashmir is the 'core' issue in Indo-Pakistani relations, a contention which had been rejected by successive Indian governments. Sharief will argue -- and justifiably so -- that neither Benazir Bhutto nor any of her predecessors had been able to get India to accept this contention. It will take Sharief a long way in enhancing his popular appeal.

A day after the talks between the two foreign secretaries began, Benazir made a very revealing statement in Islamabad: that no prime minister in Pakistan can hope to survive in office without the acquiescence of the United States. While in office, Benazir was under pressure from Washington to resume the dialogue with India, but she had painted herself into such a corner with her anti-India posturing that she was unable to make a U-turn.

Having started the dialogue with India after coming to power, Sharief has been under intense pressure from the Clinton administration to show results at the talks. Sharief can now turn to his patrons in the Pentagon and the state department and hold up the working groups as proof of the progress in talks with India.

Apologists for Prime Minister I K Gujral are disingenuous in suggesting that the working group on Jammu and Kashmir will give an opportunity to raise the issue of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in the troubled northern state. It was never for want of a forum that New Delhi could not make headway in getting Islamabad to see reason on Kashmir.

On the contrary, successive Pakistani governments since the over throw of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in 1977 have refused to see reason: they have consistently maintained that it was Pakistan's moral duty to nurture the 'freedom fighters' in Kashmir.

At the height of the terrorist movement in Kashmir, the Rao government made a available to a large number of friendly countries conclusive proof of Islamabad's direct role in terrorist activities in the northern state. While several of these countries, including Germany and the United Kingdom under John Major's prime ministership, were convinced of Pakistani complicity in the low-intensity war against India in Kashmir, the US consistently turned a blind eye against such evidence.

There is nothing to suggest that America's attitude will be any different now. But until that happens, talking to Pakistan on Kashmir can only be counter-productive. What is worse, now that India has tacitly acknowledged that Kashmir is, indeed, the 'core' issue between this country and Pakistan, New Delhi may well come under American pressure to more creatively apply the Gujral doctrine of giving till it hurts.

In the coming weeks, questions will naturally be asked about what India got from the latest round of diplomatic dialogue. The only light for India at the need of the tunnel appears to be the prospect of economic and commercial co-operation, for which a working group has been set up. A lot will, however, depend on the composition of this working group and its mandate from the two governments.

There are fears that even the working group on promotion of friendly exchanges in various fields may turn out to be a non-starter since all the concessions on such exchanges have been unilaterally offered by the Gujral government to Pakistan. Significantly, Pakistan's official media have not even reported these concessions, let alone reciprocated them.

Kind Courtesy: Sunday magazine