NEW
DELHI - Instead of overflying India, Pakistan President
General Pervez Musharraf took the Chinese route to reach
Nepal's capital Kathmandu in January 2002 for his famous
handshake with then-Indian prime minister Atal Biahri
Vajpayee at a summit meeting of the South Asian
Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC).
This may be the new Indian foreign policy
dispensation's turn to take the same route to reach
Islamabad for a formal handshake with its Pakistani
counterpart, boost regional trade and perhaps legitimize
the status quo in Kashmir, that is, with Chinese
participation in South Asian affairs.
Indian and
Pakistani experts will meet at the weekend in New Delhi
for two days of talks on nuclear confidence-building
measures. Foreign secretaries will then meet on June
27-28, also in New Delhi, to discuss the long-simmering
Kashmir dispute and a host of security issues pending
between the two countries that have acquired new urgency
since their 1998 nuclear weapons tests.
Top of
the agenda in both meetings will naturally be India's
external affairs minister Natwar Singh's twin
suggestions that Pakistan should consider adopting the
Sino-India model for peace talks, and India, Pakistan
and China should ideally have a common nuclear doctrine
for peace and stability in the region and the world.
Ever since Natwar made these suggestions -
particularly the one relating to a common nuclear
doctrine for India, China and Pakistan - in his very
first press conference on assuming office earlier this
month, the media and the strategic community in India as
well as the region and in important capitals in the
world are trying to make sense of it.
The
opposition in India, still licking its wounds from the
unexpected defeats at the hustings, took the easy way
out and dismissed the whole thing as a "flight of
fancy", and "a symptom of foot-in-the-mouth disease". As
the main opposition Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) rejected
the idea summarily, former foreign minister Jaswant
Singh wanted to know whether this was a "fanciful
individual notion" or something more serious.
China has continued to maintain a studied
silence, though it, too, sought to ascertain if it was a
serious well-thought-out idea or merely at the nascent,
philosophical stage, as Natwar had himself claimed. Not
sure what India is up to, Chinese ambassador in Delhi
Hua Junduo called on Natwar last week to get a better
understanding of what he had in mind. The foreign
minister is reported to have said that his proposal was
not new - it was part of the Congress Party's nuclear
disarmament plans put forward by Rajiv Gandhi in the
1980s. The proposal, further refined by the party, is
well thought out, he said. Chinese officials refused to
comment on whether Natwar's explanation satisfied Hua.
But indications are that China will hold fire for the
time being.
China's worries are said to stem
from two factors: the common doctrine itself and the
attempt of the new dispensation in Delhi to bracket
Pakistan and China. India's northern neighbor became a
declared nuclear power in 1965 and has since joined the
exclusive nuclear club alongside the United States,
Britain, France and Russia. The five countries are also
permanent members of the UN Security Council, with veto
power. It is unlikely that China will want to get into a
nuclear dialogue with India and Pakistan to make things
easier for the South Asian neighbors to be recognized as
nuclear powers. It considers itself in the same league
as the superpower United States, why should it come down
to the level of virtual nuclear pariahs like India and
Pakistan? The international community may have dispensed
with sanctions imposed after the 1998 tests on the
sub-continent, but it is still demanding that they
dispense with their weapons and sign the Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).
China is said to be
unhappy with Delhi's attempt to link Pakistan and China,
which is apparent not only from Natwar's common nuclear
doctrine, but also his stress on using the Sino-Indian
model in improving Delhi's relations with Islamabad.
This model suggests keeping contentious issues like
Kashmir on the backburner until there is an overall
improvement in bilateral ties between India and
Pakistan. With China, India has decided to keep their
sticky boundary dispute aside and concentrate on other
areas of mutual benefit and interest to strengthen ties.
India has long been unhappy with China for its
close ties with Pakistan. It has indeed often accused
Beijing of using the India-Pakistan conflict to keep
India tied to South Asia. But over the past few years,
things seemed to be changing. China has assured India
that its relations with Delhi were independent of its
ties with Islamabad, and there should not be any attempt
to link the two.
Though few Indians would buy
that, this has nevertheless seemed an acceptable basis
for promoting good neighborly relations so far. The
Vajpayee government made arduous efforts to improve ties
with China. A dialogue with China on all issues,
including the most contentious border dispute, is under
way. Now several analysts in India as well as in China
are interpreting Natwar's proposal as the Congress-led
United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government making a
fresh bid to rake up the China-Pakistan linkage.
Despite these possible worries, largely because
of Singh's studied unwillingness to spell out the
implications and real meaning of his proposals, China
seems to have decided, for the time being, not to make
any official comment on Natwar's remarks. It will wait
and watch, but it does seem to have concluded that the
proposal is serious and well thought-out.
Pakistan's bureaucratic-military establishment
has caught on, at least partly, to the implications of
Natwar's suggestions and reacted with disapproval,
though for the record it says it is happy that the new
government in Delhi is committed to the January 6 peace
process in accordance with the Islamabad declaration
during the last SAARC summit. Musharraf is making
radical proposals, like cutting nuclear forces to half,
if India also does so.
Other members of the
Pakistani establishment are also proposing solid-seeming
confidence-building measures. Sardar Ahmad Asef Ali, a
former foreign minister, has proposed as many as six
treaties, presumably comprising Pakistan's idea of a
nuclear restraint regime.
At the same time,
Islamabad has allowed the formidable six-party Islamic
alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, although in the
opposition, to articulate its views. In another view,
Professor Khurshid Ahmad, the vice president of the
Jamaat-e-Islami, has basically argued that the new
Indian government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is
raising irrelevant and impractical issues in order to
sidetrack the core problem of Kashmir. Pakistan has also
tried to remind India that Pakistan is not an
inconsequential state. It has test-fired two Hataf V
(Ghauri) missiles, while talking of buying more modern
aircraft and modernizing the navy.
Apart from
repeating its suggestion of reducing nuclear weapons in
tandem with India, Pakistan has basically ignored the
Indian suggestion of a common nuclear doctrine for
India, China and Pakistan, apart from welcoming it as
"fresh and innovative". Apparently, like other
observers, it is making the mistake of looking at both
these suggestions separately and not understanding their
far-reaching implications.
One doesn't yet know
how Islamabad will react once the full implications of
the suggestion become apparent. Natwar is maintaining a
studied silence on the substantial part of his
suggestion and wants the parties concerned to realize
themselves what he is actually implying. He may want to
go further only when he has assessed the reaction from
all significant world capitals.
The first thing
to understand is that Natwar Singh is too seasoned a
diplomat - he retired as foreign secretary 15 years ago
and has been active in foreign policy discourse on
behalf of the Congress Party since - to make half-baked
suggestions in a formal press conference, indeed the
first to mark his elevation as foreign minister. The
reason he is putting forward his ideas as merely
"nascent" is that he needs to test the waters before he
unveils his ideas fully. We may have just heard the
first chapter of a full-blown Natwar doctrine.
A
number of arguments have be made in the past few days in
the Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Nepali media to
point out the impracticality of the idea of India, China
and Pakistan evolving a common nuclear doctrine. All the
three countries, for instance, are said to have separate
reasons for having developed nuclear weapons in the
first place. They have done so at different stages in
their evolving military careers and with different
enemies or circumstances in mind.
The thing to
understand is that Natwar cannot possibly be unaware of
these factors. He may have a common nuclear doctrine in
mind only as a long-term goal. But if so, what are the
immediate implications of his move? Why is he trying to
put a spanner in the works of ongoing negotiations with
both these countries that appear to be going so well?
Why should he disturb the feel-good atmospherics built
with so much effort by the Vajpayee government? Does he
have a good reason for doing so?
It seems Natwar
is not happy with Vajpayee's idea of how to go about
seeking reconciliation with Pakistan. The previous
government was moving in the direction of giving some
sort of self-determination to the Muslim part of the
state of Jammu and Kashmir by trifurcating the state
into the Hindu-majority Jammu, Buddhist-majority Ladakh
and overwhelmingly Muslim Valley of Kashmir. Vajpayee's
mentor, the Hindu fundamentalist Rashtriya Swayamsewak
Sangh (RSS) had long been demanding this trifurcation
and had intensified its efforts during the rule of its
political wing, the BJP-led coalition government. The
idea was for the central government to run Jammu and
Ladakh that would be designated as union territories.
This would free Hindus and Buddhists, in their view,
from Muslim domination.
This suited Pakistan
eminently as the fundamentalists and exclusivists at the
helm of affairs there didn't want to have anything to do
with Hindus and Buddhists who would in any case be loyal
to India and a thorn in the Pakistani side. There is no
separatist movement in the Jammu and Ladakh areas
either. This would clear the way for some sort of
settlement to be reached with Pakistan to "unite" the
partitioned parts of Muslim Kashmir in a way that would
allow both India and Pakistan to maintain sovereignty
over the areas under their control. Something like this
would have suited both the Hindu fundamentalists in
India and the Muslim fundamentalists in Pakistan.
Vajpayee was thinking of some bold solution for
the Kashmir issue, perhaps bold enough to win the Nobel
Peace Prize for him and Musharraf. It was not for
nothing that Musharraf was bowling for Vajpayee in the
recent general elections and Vajpayee supporters were
carrying Musharraf's photographs on their campaign
coaches. Essentially, Vajpayee was seeking South Asian
unity by conceding some sort of "self-determination" to
Kashmir.
Once fully unveiled, the Natwar
doctrine, however, would reject these propositions.
India would maintain the status quo on Jammu and
Kashmir. The Shimla Agreement said so. At least that is
the Indian interpretation. No talk of self-determination
would be entertained. In any case, the overwhelming
majority of Muslim Kashmiris, too, as an independent
survey has revealed, are not in favor of joining hands
with Pakistan. Indeed, they never wanted their state to
merge with Pakistan, neither at the time of independence
from Britain in 1947 nor at the height of
Pakistan-backed separatist militancy in 1990-91.
As a concession to Pakistan, however, as well as
to other South Asian neighbors, India may now be ready
to invite China into South Asia, even as a member of
SAARC perhaps. This has been a long-standing Pakistani
demand. Other countries like Bangladesh and Nepal have
thought that in its present state, with a major country
like India dominating other smaller countries, SAARC
would never take off; but with China's entry, the two
big countries and economies would balance each other to
the benefit of all. Also, China has been asking Pakistan
to concentrate on developing trade and other ties with
India rather than being so narrowly focused on Kashmir.
China itself has been keen to join SAARC for
some time. It expressed its desire earlier this year
through China's ambassador to Nepal Sun Heping. In a
newspaper interview with People's Review published on
March 25 in Kathmandu, where the SAARC secretariat is
located, Heping said: "The time is now basically ripe to
establish relations between China and SAARC." Even
earlier an indication became available when Chinese
Prime Minister Wen Jiabao became the only non-SAARC
leader to send a special message of goodwill to the
SAARC summiteers who met for its12th summit in Islamabad
this January.
Under Vajpayee, India did not
react to China's expressed desire to have a formal
relationship with this South Asian grouping. It is
possible that by talking about an unrealizable goal - at
least in the immediate future - of a common nuclear
doctrine for India, China and Pakistan, the Indian
foreign minister is hinting at New Delhi's readiness
formally to involve China in South Asian affairs. This
may eventually turn into an invitation for China to join
SAARC, as a way of kick-starting the long talked about
South Asian common market.
Several analysts have
from time to time studied the idea and found that all of
South Asia stands to gain from the vast market potential
that China has to offer. And because of its size,
population and economic activities, they say, India is
bound to be the largest beneficiary. While Pakistan has
long feared that SAARC would help India to perpetuate
its dominance over the region, India has felt threatened
from the idea that all smaller neighbors would gang up
against it under the leadership of Pakistan. With
China's entry, these fears caused by the present
"imbalance" would go away.
Natwar Singh will,
however, be able to unveil his complete doctrine only if
he gets encouragement from the parties concerned. China
itself has remained silent. But it may have encouraged
Pakistan, some in India are hoping, to welcome the
proposal, calling it "new and innovative".
Musharraf, however, reiterated that India and
Pakistan should make South Asia a nuclear-free zone.
India under Vajpayee would not have countenanced this.
But the earlier Congress Party governments never went
overtly nuclear, even though it's they who took the
trouble and the expense to build the weapons. In any
case, these weapons, as far as one can find out, have
neither been deployed in India nor in Pakistan.
Congress-ruled India used to enjoy conventional
weapon superiority over Pakistan that was lost with
nuclear tests in 1998, almost the very first thing that
the BJP-led government ordered. It would be interesting
to see how a Congress-led Indian government would
respond to the idea of a nuclear-free South Asia. Former
Congress prime minister Rajiv Gandhi's desire to work
for a nuclear-free world is well known.
Natwar's
ideas are also said to be based on Rajiv Gandhi's
nuclear doctrine. It seems to have been refurbished by
Congress leader and former diplomat, now minister for
petroleum, Mani Shankar Aiyer. The further unfolding of
the Natwar doctrine will be waited for quite eagerly.
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