Author: Ayaz Amir
Publication: The Times of India
Date: February 11, 2001
Yes, the Pakistan CEO has constantly
held out the olive branch
The ball is in India's court for
once that cliche is a guide to clear thinking. It is for India to decide
whether it wants to remain stuck in a time warp or whether it wants to
inject some movement into a frozen situation.
The politics of embarrassment worked
fine in the aftermath of Kargil - painting Pakistan with a war-brush and
charging it for "cross-border terrorism". But with the law of diminishing
returns setting in, it is no longer valid.
'The capacity for heaping embarrassment
on one's adversary is no substitute for policy. Will denigrating Pakistan
resolve the Kashmir issue? Will it put an end to the killings in the Valley?
In life as in diplomacy, there are
occasions which call for a cold look and a stiff manner. When Sartaj Aziz
(then Pakistan foreign minister) visited Delhi at the height of the Kargil
fighting, the visibly icy manner of his counterpart, Jaswant Singh, was
perhaps appropriate to the circumstances.
But iciness and scorn cultivated
endlessly, almost as ends in themselves, are tiresome poses. Apart from
any effect on the audience, they leave even the poseur exhausted. After
Kargil, Indian diplomacy vis-a-vis Pakistan seems entranced with the icy
mode.
But is it working? Pakistan has
broken out of the isolation it attracted as a result of the Musharraf coup.
The IMF is doing business with it.
Other donors are overcoming their reluctance to deal with it. General Musharraf
is more relaxed in office, more at ease with his foreign interlocutors.
The army is with him.
The politicians are still grappling
with the ghosts of the past. Clinton with his India-bias is no more in
the White House.
Even as militancy rages in Kashmir
(which is India's loss not Pakistan's), "cross-border terrorism" has lost
its sting as an emotive issue. This is one sign of Pakistan's success in
putting across its peace credentials.
Another is the criticism that Musharraf
is drawing at home for making too many unrequited offers of talks to India.
To what avail then the icy mode?
India says it will have no truck
with Pakistan as long as conditions are not right. This is a bit like the
Israeli stance that the intifada must end before it will talk peace with
the Palestinians. If the intifada ends in Kashmir what is there left to
talk about?
There is a sentiment for peace in
both countries which is frayed each time Indian policy-makers duck behind
the parapets. There are also powerful rejectionist elements which gather
strength each time a negative move is made.
Should the two leaders be making
a pitch for peace or should they remain entrapped in belligerence? Hostility
comes more easily to them because they have lived with it for so long.
"Institutional cussedness", a phrase I have culled from an Indian newspaper,
describes this state of mind best.
Imaginative steps that could chart
a fresh course represent the more difficult option. Musharraf has repeatedly
held out an olive branch. What is preventing Vajpayee from seizing it and
inviting him over?
Any meeting between the two would
only be tinsel and protocol and the restating of old positions. But doesn't
India want precisely this, the triumph of style over substance, quotations
from Ghalib over any substantive talks on Kashmir?
It is in Pakistan's interest to
insist on preconditions. It serves India's purpose to be vague. Here it
is the other way round: India insisting, with a petulance which sits ill
with its great claims of power, on preconditions while Pakistan is being
open in holding out the offer of talks.
The logic of this inversion is baffling.
Pakistan would be happy if, without attracting international censure, it
could keep the pot simmering in Kashmir.
It is in India's interest to create
a constituency for peace not only in Kashmir but Pakistan as well. How
on earth it can accomplish this without engaging Pakistan diplomatically
defies understanding.
(Ayaz Amir is a columnist with 'The
Dawn', Karachi)
