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Roadmap offers risk, but also
rewards
By M B Naqvi
KARACHI -
As was widely expected, the foreign secretaries of India
and Pakistan succeeded on Wednesday in drawing up a
roadmap for what is being described as "composite
dialogue" between the two estranged neighbors.
It is a fairly tight schedule that is to
culminate in a meeting of foreign ministers in August
after expert-level talks are concluded. These
negotiations will not actually start until after India's
general election, expected in the next few months, is
out of the way.
The two sides have revived the
format of talks that were adopted in 1997. They
identified nine, subjects that will be discussed at
various levels. Six expert committees will discuss
specific differences, while two subjects - disputed
Kashmir and peace and security - have been reserved for
the two foreign secretaries to hammer out.
A
special experts-level committee or sub-committee will
examine nuclear rivalry to see how popular anxieties on
the subject can be reduced. Two facts are known: first,
the two countries reached a memorandum on nuclear risk
reduction in February 1999 during Indian Prime Minister
Atal Bihari Vajpayee's visit to the Pakistani city of
Lahore - a memo that has remained a dead letter. Second,
Pakistan has this time suggested a fresh scheme of
nuclear confidence-building measures, titled a "Nuclear
Restraint Regime".
Other subjects that are to be
discussed at varying bureaucratic levels cover the whole
range of accumulated differences between Pakistan and
India. They are the disputed territory of the Siachen
glacier, terrorism and narcotics, water management,
economic and commercial cooperation and cultural
exchanges.
Some of these subjects, given a
modicum of goodwill and good sense, could be quite
easily resolved. Indeed one of them - Siachen - was
actually agreed to and the agreement was initialed by
two countries' heads of foreign office in 1990. But the
Indian government, fearing a popular backlash, killed
it. That agreement could be brought down from the shelf,
dusted off and signed without further negotiations
because it was geographically the only solution that
would benefit both sides equally.
Most other
subjects are technical in nature and can be resolved
with political will. Only four subjects will need a good
deal of negotiation and a lot of political will and firm
determination. Kashmir heads this list. But it is
simultaneously a most complex and an easy issue to
solve: complex because of the history of three
(excluding Kargil) wars fought over it and because all
negotiations have always failed.
But if it is
looked at from the viewpoint of fulfilling the desires
of the people of the disputed once-princely state and if
both the larger countries of South Asia want to get on
with the pursuit of economic development and ensure
ampler enjoyment of human rights for all concerned, it
will not be too difficult to resolve.
Historically, the solution of the three other
subjects - economic cooperation, cultural exchanges and
peace and security (which includes nuclear risk
reduction), was linked to solution of the Kashmir
problem.
Pakistan until December maintained that
no progress could be made on these subjects until the
Kashmir issue is satisfactorily resolved. But now it has
agreed to proceed simultaneously on all issues. Even so,
Pakistani officials frequently relapse into the old
kneejerk reaction of "no progress in any field until
India satisfies in some fashion on Kashmir".
A
notable change occurred in December when, as a result of
US good offices - "facilitation", as it has been termed
so as not to offend Indian sensibilities and Pakistanis'
hope of limiting the damage from the proliferation of
nuclear materials that took place through an
international black market - Islamabad agreed to offer a
unilateral and indefinite ceasefire in the Kashmir
insurgency.
It also ceased to insist on Kashmir
being recognized as the core issue that had to be taken
up first - before any other matter could be discussed.
Pakistan also indicated its change in attitude by
agreeing to free trade in the framework of the South
Asian Association for Regional Cooperation in January.
So long as US "facilitation" continues and other
pressures continue on Pakistan, there are reasons to
hope that maybe, just maybe, these nuclear rivals might
be able to compose their differences.
Hitherto
the momentum of their cold war has not quite ended.
Pakistan's religious right, President Pervez Musharraf's
own constituency of the army, and even the secular right
looks askance at the military-run "democracy" for
allegedly defaming and using Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, the
country's father of the bomb who admitted to selling
nuclear technology to Iran and Libya, as a scapegoat.
Even so, Musharraf is expected to scrape through if
Washington goes on helping him.
Pakistan will
readily sign up on trade and economic cooperation,
though it has so far resisted all arguments that freer
Indo-Pakistan trade will be beneficial to it.
The peace and security issue - including the
dangers from the still intensifying arms race - has
always been linked with Kashmir: without a Kashmir
solution, various arms races are sure to go on, although
bothsides concede that this dispute has no military
solution.
As for cultural exchanges, especially
large-scale people-to-people contacts through easy
travel, neither side really wants them. Ruling elites in
both countries have thrived politically on shrill
rhetoric directed against each other. All they can be
expected to do is to ostentatiously organize cultural
troupes and delegations to the other country - and that
will be trumpeted as "cultural exchanges".
Given
the reasons for the change in Pakistan's stance, it is
likely to remain in a reactive mode. Only if India takes
a bolder and more proactive stance on people-to-people
contacts will there be any real advance.
It is a
sign of maturity on both sides that most of the dialogue
will take place after the Indian polls. A lot rides on
that result, of course.
But auguries are good in
one vital respect: A victory by the opposition alliance
over the ruling National Democratic Alliance coalition
(led by Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party) will not
materially change India's policy vis-a-vis Pakistan,
though there probably will be nuances of change in favor
of closer cultural exchanges and perhaps a shade
stronger stance on Kashmir.
(Inter Press
Service)
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