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India and Pakistan Work to Sustain Leaders' Dialogue

India and Pakistan Work to Sustain Leaders' Dialogue

Author: Amy Waldman
Publication: The New York Times
Date: January 7, 2004

They remain the ultimate odd couple, the general and the poet, two leaders whose past interactions have been marked by great expectations and even greater disappointments. But as they posed for the cameras on Monday morning, their handshake firm and ungrudging, it seemed to herald a new chapter in their relationship.

Gen. Pervez Musharraf, president of Pakistan, and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee of India and senior officials from both sides spent about an hour together on Monday taking efforts to revive a dormant peace effort one step further. The meeting came more than two years after their last session - at the Agra summit meeting in July 2001 - broke down in bitterness.

Less publicly, but perhaps more crucially, their underlings continued to lay the groundwork for what both sides hope will be a sustained dialogue between the nuclear-armed nations, who have fought three wars and two years ago nearly fought a fourth.

Niaz A. Naik, a former foreign secretary for Pakistan, said the two sides had already agreed to restart a dialogue and were simply working out when it would begin and at what level it would take place. "They are trying to firm up, before Mr. Vajpayee leaves, the procedural issues of how they will restart a dialogue," Mr. Naik said.

He said he believed that India wanted one or two months - perhaps until the end of March - to allow Mr. Vajpayee to bring the Indian public along with him. He said it was probable that a substantive discussion of how to solve the two countries' dispute over Kashmir would come later, perhaps after India's election, which could be held as early as April.

Kashmir, a border region inhabited mostly by Muslims, is at the core of the alienation between Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. Each control a part if it.

Pakistan has long pushed for a dialogue about the part of Kashmir controlled by India. But India first wants Pakistan to end its support for an Islamic insurgency that has raged in the Indian- controlled section since 1989.

Pakistan sees the militants fighting in Kashmir as freedom fighters, but denies providing any material support. India disputes that and says the militants are terrorists.

Officials disclosed little in the wake of the meeting between Mr. Vajpayee and General Musharraf on the sidelines of a regional summit meeting under way here, their discipline itself a sign of the high stakes and the ongoing negotiations.

"Both leaders welcomed the recent steps toward the normalization of relations between the two countries and expressed the hope that the process will continue," Yashwant Sinha, India's foreign minister, said at a news briefing.

All signs were that the process was continuing. Laying the foundation stone for a residential complex at the Indian High Commission here, Mr. Vajpayee called for dialogue to continue, saying, "One should understand each other's problems and work together to find a way out."

He seemed to call for increasing the number of diplomats each country sends to the other. "New questions have arisen," he said. "New answers are being sought."

After a meeting on Sunday between the countries' foreign ministers, their foreign secretaries - the highest-level civil servants for foreign affairs - met Monday morning.

More crucially, India's national security adviser, Brajesh Mishra, met with Lt. Gen. Ehsan ul- Haq, director general of Pakistan's powerful intelligence agency, and a Pakistani official said they were to meet again on Tuesday.

Mr. Mishra also met with other "top security officials," said Mr. Naik, who disclosed the first meeting on Geo TV on Sunday night. He said that the two men had had a very good meeting and that he believed that among the subjects they discussed were security questions regarding the likely start of a bus service between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad, the capitals of Indian- and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, and how to prevent militants from crossing what would become a soft border.

If, as is widely believed, India is seeking a commitment from Pakistan to end support for militant activity in Kashmir, few would be better placed to deliver on that commitment than General Ehsan. Mr. Naik, however, said he thought India already had the assurances it wanted. "I think they are fully convinced that Pakistan is now determined to stop the traffic," he said.

The agency General Ehsan heads, Inter-Services Intelligence, has backed the insurgency in Kashmir almost since it began, helping to create and train some of the groups that fought there.

Mr. Naik, who led back-channel negotiations with India under Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, said there had been meetings on "how to resume an interaction on the political issues, certainly including Kashmir," and deliberations about the level at which they would take place.

"I understand the understanding is that eventually" all three leaders - Mr. Vajpayee, Mr. Musharraf, and Pakistan's prime minister, Mir Zafrullah Jamali - would be sitting together, Mr. Naik said, adding, "This summit has to be carefully prepared."

The Pakistanis are eager for something concrete to emerge from this week's summit meeting, and they were quick to proclaim Monday that something would. Pakistan's information minister, Sheik Rashid Ahmed, told Aaj Tak television on Monday that the two sides were working toward a joint declaration.

"There are continuing differences on the definition of terrorism and the perception of terrorism," Mr. Rashid said, "but there has been headway in trying to resolve these issues."

The Indians are less hurried, and were being far more circumspect. Declining to provide any more details of the leaders' morning meeting or any other discussions, Mr. Sinha said, "Anyone who at this stage says anything more is not doing any service to the cause."

General Musharraf is under greater pressure than Mr. Vajpayee to deliver something concrete, namely a dialogue, quickly. Any indication that he was backpedaling on Kashmir by ending Pakistan's proxy war would be highly unpopular here if he had nothing to show in return.

Mr. Naik said that after General Musharraf's recent statement that Pakistan would be open to setting aside its long-held insistence on a plebiscite for Kashmiris, the "Kashmiri people" - Mr. Naik did not specify which ones - "were taken by surprise."

"President Musharraf spent three hours with them trying to explain to them that it did not mean we are going to abandon them or abandon the Kashmiri cause over there," Mr. Naik said.
 


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