Advantage Gilani

in Islamabad

INDIA and Pakistan would have to be really foolish to go to war against each other, and they appear to have found another way to sate their appetite for jousting. They fight in the substitute battleground that goes by the name of joint statement, a painstakingly constructed document that is sometimes put out after a diplomatic encounter.

In most bilateral or multilateral contexts, a joint statement is considered a measure of the success of a meeting, indicating a productive round of talks and agreement on important issues. In the India-Pakistan context, perversely enough, it is the absence of a joint statement that helps keep both sides in their respective comfort zones, confirming as it does the self-fulfilling prophesy that neer the twain shall meet. But should a joint statement dare to rear its head, it becomes the subject of intense word analysis which side gave in, which side stuck to its ground and on what issues, who triumphed and who was trounced. Indeed, even in the drafting, each word is fought over by diplomats from both sides, as if those words were nuclear bombs in themselves.

So it was with the India-Pakistan joint statement of July 16. It came after two days of intense talks, including a long session, between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart, Yusuf Raza Gilani, at the Egyptian seaside resort of Sharm-el-Sheikh, where both leaders were attending the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit. In a meeting that lasted three hours, the two leaders met by themselves, without aides, for nearly an hour.

Away from all the spin and parsed down to the basics, the joint statement is a declaration that India and Pakistan will engage with each other in order to solve their problems, even if such engagement does not immediately take the shape and form of the composite dialogue. It is a reflection of the thinking that not talking can lead to a further deterioration of the atmosphere between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.

But such is the power of an India-Pakistan joint statement that east of Wagah, it threw a pall of gloom that too much ground had been conceded to Islamabad despite the fact that it had not yet shown any credible action against those behind the terror attacks in Mumbai last November. On the other side, mixed feelings prevail.

Included for the first time in a bilateral document, although not explicitly, are Pakistans concerns about an alleged Indian involvement in the insurgency in Balochistan. The joint statement also contained the line saying action on terrorism should not be linked to the Composite Dialogue process and these should not be bracketed. This has been interpreted by Pakistan to mean that India has come around to its point of view that terrorist actions should not be allowed to derail the composite dialogue process.

However, Manmohan Singhs subsequent clarifications to the Indian media and in the Lok Sabha that the correct interpretation of this ambiguously worded line is that Pakistan should not wait for the composite dialogue process to begin before taking action on terrorism put a damper on Pakistani claims of a diplomatic victory at Sharm-el-Sheikh.

That the joint statement also contained no reference to a time frame within which the composite dialogue would begin also provided cause for doubt. There was also much suspicion about the absence of any mention of Kashmir in the statement.

But Prime Minister Gilani appears determined not to let such doubts stand in the way of what he described with satisfaction as a productive meeting with his Indian counterpart. If at all he was concerned over the Indian interpretation of that vaguely worded sentence in the joint statement, he gave no indication of it. In a chat with the Dawn newspaper while returning from Sharm-el-Sheikh, he seemed to demonstrate more understanding of his Indian counterparts position than perhaps even the Congress party.

Dr Singh has to still sell the idea of engagement with Pakistan back home, for which he needs time, and he is primarily trying to pacify those opposed to normalisation of ties between the two countries, he said. Similarly, at a press conference he held after returning to Pakistan from Egypt, Gilani expressed no concern at Indias categorical statement hours after his meeting with Manmohan Singh that there would be no talks until Pakistan took action against the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks.

Rather, he opted to downplay Manmohan Singhs Lok Sabha statement on their Sharm-el-Sheikh meeting, in which he said as much. Gilani laid more stress on the agreement between the two that dialogue is the way forward, underlining that the Foreign Secretaries of the two countries would meet soon, and thereafter the Foreign Ministers on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September. Before the talks, Pakistan was insistent that India must resume the composite dialogue process, which was suspended in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks. But Gilani nimbly sidestepped all questions about a time frame for the resumption of the composite dialogue.

Gilanis reticence may have two reasons: One, notwithstanding each sides interpretation of the joint statement, the Pakistan government has accepted that the composite dialogue will not begin immediately. Pakistani officials indicated as much, saying privately that what mattered to them was not when the composite dialogue would start, but the agreement that a dialogue must take place. Secondly, it was crucial for Gilani to project his talks with Manmohan Singh as a success in order to bolster his political standing vis-a-vis President Asif Ali Zardari. Finding fault with Manmohan Singhs interpretation of the talks would have sent out the message that the talks failed.

Sharm-el-Sheikh has perceptibly boosted the confidence of Gilani. Since his return from Egypt, he has made no bones about his turf war with Zardari, openly dropping hints that the two of them did not see eye to eye. Just two days after his return, in an interview to The News, a prominent daily, he hinted he would soon reshuffle the Cabinet and drop Zardaris friends from it.

The immediate comparison to the India-Pakistan meeting in Egypt is with the Russian rendezvous just a month previously, where Manmohan Singh brutally cut down Zardari in front of the cameras with the line about his limited mandate to discuss how Pakistan could prevent terrorist attacks on India from its soil. In contrast to the sorry figure that Zardari cut before Manmohan Singh, the fact that Gilani raised the Balochistan issue with the Indian side and it found mention in the joint statement has added to his stature within Pakistan. Pakistanis fervently believe that Indian intelligence agencies, working out of consulates and other facilities in the Afghan border regions, are fomenting trouble in Balochistan and even in the tribal areas.

Many quote as evidence interviews by Brahmdagh Bugti, a fugitive rebel Baloch leader who is said to be based in Afghanistan, in which he has talked about Indian assistance to the insurgents. With regard to the tribal areas, the charge against India is that it has bought out sections of the Taliban and is funnelling funds and arms to the militants from its bases inside Afghanistan. Just as the Indian government leaked the contents of a dossier given by Pakistan on the Mumbai attacks to mollify the Indian media and divert their attention from the defeat of the joint statement, the Pakistan government played up the Balochistan angle to drive home the success of Gilanis mission at the talks. The otherwise careful Dawn was the first to float that at the meeting Gilani handed over to Manmohan Singh a dossier detailing Indian involvement in Balochistan and in the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team.

While the Indian media gloated that Pakistan had for the first time accepted in black and white that the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) was involved in the Mumbai attack and also acknowledged that two of the dead gunmen as well as Ajmal Amir Kasab, the only survivor of the 10 attackers of Mumbai, now in Indian custody, were Pakistani nationals, the Pakistani media found their comfort in the story that India had finally been read the riot act by Gilani on the Balochistan issue.

The million-dollar question now is will Pakistan deliver on its promise in the joint statement to bring to book the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks?

The latest dossier that Pakistan has given on the Mumbai attacks the one leaked to the Indian press after Sharm-el-Sheikh details the steps the Pakistani government has taken in this regard. It was handed over to New Delhi on July 11, days before the Manmohan Singh-Gilani sit-in, possibly in an attempt to clear the air before the talks.

The Pakistani Federal Investigation Agencys (FIA) probe into the attacks has netted five suspects so far, while 13 have been declared proclaimed offenders. The most important among the five in custody is the Lashkar-e-Taiba commander Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi, detained in a raid on an LeT camp in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, in December 2008. He is described as the mastermind of the attack.

The other four are Zarar Shah, who is described as a facilitator and expert of computer networks; Hamad Amin Sadiq, who is charged with facilitating funds and hideouts for the Mumbai attackers; Abu al Qama, described as a handler; and Shahid Jamil Riaz, described both as a facilitator for funds and as a crew member of a boat used by the attackers.

Though the case was filed in February, it hardly registered any movement in the anti-terror court where it is posted, mainly because the court was without a judge for nearly two months. It could be a mere coincidence that it was only as India and Pakistan prepared to talk in Egypt that a judge was found for the court. The proceedings take place at the Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi, where the five men are being held.

At a hearing two days after the Sharm-el-Sheikh meeting, the FIA also submitted a supplementary charge-sheet against the suspects, adding to the one submitted in early May. Awaited now is a formal indictment of the five suspects so that the trial can begin.

But if there were attempts by Pakistan to show it was doing something to punish the Mumbai perpetrators, other developments sent out contrary signals. Just days before the meeting in Egypt, the governments appeal in the Supreme Court against the release of Hafiz Saeed, the founder of the LeT and the chief of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), the front organisation of the banned militant group, appeared to have hit a dead end.

India wants Pakistan to put Saeed behind bars and to dismantle the JuD, which it sees as a crucial piece of the anti-India infrastructure of terror on Pakistani soil. Under diplomatic pressure, Pakistan placed him under house arrest in December 2008, but he was ordered released by the Lahore High Court in June 2009. This queered the India-Pakistan pitch even further. But as part of the efforts to clear the air before Sharm-el-Sheikh, both the federal government and the Punjab provincial government appealed in the Supreme Court against the ruling of the High Court.

At the very first hearing, the Supreme Court Bench, headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhary, was stern in its observations that the Punjab government must provide better reason for placing Saeed under house arrest than the U.N. Security Council designation of him under the 1267 Taliban and Al Qaeda committee. Rattled by the observations, the Punjab government all but withdrew its petition, a bad signal to send out on the eve of the Sharm-el-Sheikh talks.

But the federal government, sharply aware of the impact of the case on the upcoming talks, persuaded the Punjab Attorney-General to keep a final decision on continuing with the appeal pending until the next hearing, the date for which is to be fixed only at the end of July. The adjournment safely took it out of the Egypt meetings calendar.

It is unclear what direction the two cases the one in the anti-terror court and the second in the Supreme Court will assume and how they will end. But it appears quite certain that while India and Pakistan will talk despite all the ambiguities of their joint statement, how much substance there will be to the talks in the coming months will depend greatly on the progress of these two cases through Pakistans legal system.