DEADLOCK AT AGRA

Published : Jul 21, 2001 00:00 IST

The India-Pakistan peace process comes to a halt at the Agra Summit, unable to overcome the compulsions of political reality, chiefly relating to the vastly different positions on Kashmir.

THE high road to peace between India and Pakistan meandered into a dead-end at Agra. When the momentum towards the Agra Summit began with the late-May exchange of letters between Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and the Pakistani military ruler and soon-to-be President, General Pervez Musharraf, the extravagance of hope began its tussle with the compulsions of reality. The optimists were always treading rather thin ground, since the two countries lacked even a common vocabulary to deal with their mutual relations. Finally, Agra showed that despite the common linguistic heritage of the two sides, mutual intelligibility is still a problem.

'Failure' was a word that External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh was disinclined to use the day after. His understanding was that the invitation extended by Pakistan to the Indian Prime Minister for a visit later this year remained in place. The dialogue would continue, he asserted, and the confidence-building measures that had been unilaterally announced by India prior to the summit "would be fully implemented".

To the extent that both the positive elements identified by Jaswant Singh require reciprocal arrangements on both sides, his optimism needs to be tested against Pakistan's posture after the failure of the Agra Summit. Although it is unlikely that Pakistan would immediately rescind its invitation to the Indian Prime Minister, the Musharraf regime's commitment to the confidence-building measures announced by India is far from certain. Pakistan's insistence on discussing the 'core issue' of Kashmir before all else is only likely to impede progress on other fronts. If the Musharraf regime were to go along with India's proposals on easing the restrictions on travel between the two countries - both by liberalising visa norms and opening more land transit points, including along the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir - it would need to justify its actions to the domestic constituency that demands progress on Kashmir before any other bargain is struck with India.

This uneasy stasis in bilateral relations is unlikely to persist. The Islamic warriors who have found a favourable environment on Pakistani soil are likely to push it into an upward spiral of mutual belligerence by their actions on the ground. They have already served notice of their intentions by executing a series of terror strikes in Kashmir during the Agra Summit. And the main militant groups have already denounced India for the failure of the Summit.

At stake for Pakistan is a principle that it has come to regard as essential to its identity. After spending years in the futile quest of wresting Kashmir away, it is now willing to settle for an acknowledgment from India that the territory's final status still constitutes an area of 'dispute'. This is a verbal concession that India is simply unwilling to make, for reasons equally fundamental to its identity. Jaswant Singh put it at a media conference two days before Musharraf's arrival in Delhi: "It is quite often said by our neighbour that Kashmir is the core issue. I have often said it is not the core issue, but the core of Indian nationhood. We do not believe in denominational nationhood. We believe in civic nationalism."

These locutions from a ranking member of the Bharatiya Janata Party - an unapologetic exponent of 'cultural nationalism' - may sound a trifle implausible, but Jaswant Singh fortunately has the legacy of more enlightened Indian political traditions to draw upon. The liberal consensus in India, if the BJP's own affiliates on the religious Right were to be excluded, supports a broad-ranging discussion with the new political forces in Kashmir under the overall framework of constitutionalism. A trilateral dialogue on issues that touch at the core of the State's sovereignty is clearly ruled out. Making any concession to the Pakistani negotiating stance would have put this consensus at risk.

The stakes for Pakistan are, in many senses greater. The military does not pretend to have a popular mandate, though it has as the custodian of ideological purity, the authority to bargain with India. Politically, Musharraf is stymied by the Islamic jehad groups which have flourished on the patronage of the military. Economically, he is hamstrung by the dictates of multilateral donors, which have eroded Pakistan's fiscal autonomy to an unprecedented degree. Pakistan's economic adjustment programme is about to begin biting deeply, and in dealing with the political consequences Musharraf cannot afford to leave his flanks vulnerable to an attack by Islamic hardliners.

The elaborate diplomatic choreography of the days leading up to the Summit provided adequate indication of what the tone of the discussions would be. Rather than attend to the serious business of setting out the agenda for discussion, both sides chose repeated recourse to the device of declaratory diplomacy. India on its part announced a series of unilateral measures permitting easier movement across the borders. As a means to stabilise the military situation along the LoC, it announced - again seemingly without consulting the other side - that the Director-General of Military Operations (DGMO) would be visiting Pakistan for discussions with his counterpart.

Pakistan chose not to respond to the unilateral concessions from India and after a phase of initial disorientation, politely sought the postponement of the DGMO's visit until after the Summit. Further, it served repeated notice that its focus was on a different part of the canvas of bilateral relations, once issuing an official statement on the alleged 'repression' in Kashmir, which had the Indian Foreign Office seething in rage. Further concerns were raised by Musharraf's statements to a Dubai-based newspaper just two days before his scheduled arrival in Delhi, debunking the Simla and Lahore accords as irrelevant and rejecting any proposal to freeze the LoC as an international border.

THE rain that soaked Delhi the day Musharraf arrived lent itself to various interpretations. There was first the natural tendency to interpret the weather as a happy augury for the future of relations between the estranged neighbours. The rain relented just enough to allow for a reception to the Pakistani General that surpassed any courtesy rendered a visitor from that country. There was a pointed gesture from Air Chief Marshal A.Y. Tipnis, who represented the military chiefs at the ceremonial reception. Tipnis' decision to confine himself to a cordial handshake, rather than the salute mandated by protocol, was read, perhaps accurately as a riposte for (then Army chief) Musharraf's failure to receive Prime Minister Vajpayee on his arrival in Lahore in 1999. The message seemed to have registered with Musharraf, who invariably responded to the crowds thronging his public appearances with a mixture of a salute and wave.

At every public engagement, the visiting General was businesslike and purposeful. After a visit to Mahatma Gandhi's samadhi at the Raj Ghat, he placed on record his belief that the principle of non-violence was a matter of central importance to India and Pakistan.

Musharraf's arrival statement spoke of his conviction that the political leadership in India and Pakistan could engage in frank and meaningful discussions on the Kashmir issue. This caused a minor frisson of diplomatic anxiety, but as the day wore on, there were a number of events that contributed to an elevation of the mood.

India's official spokesperson, Nirupama Rao, provided a fairly upbeat assessment of the first half of the day's events. Declining to clarify whether an agenda had been set, she described the arrival of the Pakistan President as "the beginning of a process - the commencement of a journey". Ironically, these were precisely the words that she was to reprise on a distinctly gloomy note after the Summit concluded on July 16.

That metaphor of a journey had been invoked earlier on the day of Musharraf's arrival by Jaswant Singh just as he entered into his brief consultation with the visiting dignitary. In obvious reference to the apparent repudiation of the Simla and Lahore accords just days earlier, the External Affairs Minister said that it was necessary in embarking on this new course, to appreciate the significance of all the previous journeys that had been completed in neighbourhood relations.

From the Pakistani side, there was a quick effort at addressing this particular grievance, with Foreign Secretary Inamul Haq explaining that Musharraf's remarks had been misinterpreted. He had not indicated at any stage that the Lahore and Simla accords were dead. Rather, he had only meant to say that there had been no work towards building on these accords.

An evening tea at the Pakistan High Commissioner's residence saw the participation of a sizable contingent from the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) of Jammu and Kashmir. Anointed by successive Pakistan regimes as the authentic voice of the Kashmiri people, the Hurriyat won an assurance from Musharraf that its participation would be sought in any approach towards resolving the issue.

THE highlight of President K.R. Narayanan's banquet later that day was his bold appropriation of the metaphor of the unfinished agenda of Partition. Originally attributed to Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the phrase was recently recycled by Benazir Bhutto in reference to the Kashmir issue. P.V. Narasimha Rao, then the Indian Prime Minister, responded with extreme alacrity, vowing that the eviction of Pakistan from its side of Kashmir was indeed the unfinished agenda of Partition. President Narayanan has now sought to establish a new orthodoxy: that stable and friendly relations between the neighbours were what Jinnah intended by using the term.

From Musharraf's side, there was a concession that Kashmir was not an issue that could be resolved militarily. This was read as a substantive gesture. And the symbolic bow to the greatness of India's traditions was far from typical of a Pakistani Head of State.

Yet, for all the emotional froth that was built up, nobody quite knew where the dialogue would be heading until the moment it began in Agra on the morning of July 15. And from then on, information about the progress of the talks was a zealously guarded commodity. Early that evening, the Indian Foreign Office put out a non-committal and rather vacuous summary, suffused with the full quota of cliches. The two leaders were then scheduled to meet for a further round of sequestered discussions at 6-30 p.m., with parallel deliberations taking place at the ministerial and official levels.

Both sides proved reluctant to reveal details of the discussions. Major-General Rashid Quereshi, military spokesperson for the Pakistan President, provided his own account in equally cursory fashion, saying that there had been an element of "understanding" and "some positive movement". It was inferred from this that there was a serious effort at both the apex- and the delegation-level talks to grapple with the issue of Kashmir.

It was clear though, that there had been no dramatic reordering of the conflicting priorities that were freely ventilated during the preceding phase of declaratory diplomacy. Between Pakistan's insistence that a clear recognition of the centrality of Kashmir is necessary before discussions could take place on other issues and India's belief that such a concession would only reward the sustained sponsorship of terrorism from across the border, it seemed there was little meeting ground.

Perhaps with the extravagance of unbridled hope, the observers were keenly looking for signals from the meagre information that was being made available. The one-to-one dialogue between Vajpayee and Musharraf went far beyond the 15-minute time-frame that had been laid down in the original programme. The two leaders spent 90 minutes in sequestered discussions before the delegations from the two sides were brought in. This was read as a suggestion that they had been able to work out a set of principles that would govern a common approach to the resolution of differences on Kashmir.

In the course of the day's discussions, Musharraf extended an invitation to Vajpayee to visit Pakistan. It was further inferred from India's rather quick acceptance of this invitation that there has been an agreement to raise the level of the dialogue on Kashmir. Under the Islamabad accord of 1997, India agreed to discuss Kashmir with Pakistan, as part of a broader dialogue process, referred to as the "composite" or the "two plus six" negotiating brief. Kashmir and "peace and security" constituted the first two among the issues that were to be discussed, followed by six other matters that Pakistan has traditionally insisted are of lesser importance. But the Foreign Secretaries from the two sides, who were designated to discuss the issue of Kashmir, never managed to go beyond long-held positions. By offering implicitly to institutionalise the dialogue on Kashmir at the level of the political leadership, India, it seemed, was holding out the promise of a mechanism to discuss this issue, though over an unspecified time-frame.

As credible information from both sides dried up, observers were left to infer on its progress from the numerous and often conflicting accounts that were rendered by the television crews that had physical proximity to the Summit venue. It was assumed, as much from the inputs received at Agra as from statements made prior to the Summit, that the Pakistan side retained several reservations about India's conception of a "mechanism". The Pakistani suggestion that a "process" of resolving Kashmir be instituted was, by all accounts, part of the discussions. This would require a number of time-bound commitments from the Indian side that would necessitate the entry of a third party into the negotiations at an early date. Pakistan's designated third party in these negotiations, it was again inferred, was the APHC, which India has refused to deal with except as part of the Indian constitutional process.

Later in the evening, Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Sushma Swaraj, perhaps taking her ministerial designation too literally, afforded some relief from the information famine. Speaking to a Doordarshan news crew, she explained that at the delegation-level talks, India had renewed its insistence that Pakistan should put an end to cross-border terrorism, account for Indian prisoners of war (POWs), and initiate meaningful discussions on reducing nuclear risks in the subcontinent. This was for the assembled media personnel a rare nugget of news. But for more seasoned observers, it seemed to suggest a serious lack of forward movement. Pakistan has always pleaded that it has no control over militant violence in Kashmir, which it described as "indigenous" in its origins. And its reluctance to bargain away its nascent nuclear weapons capability, which it argues is a necessary deterrent against India's superior conventional military strength, part of the pre-Summit state of knowledge.

It was learnt on reasonable authority at the end of Day One, that the two delegations intended working through the night on the phraseology of an agreed statement that would bridge the massive gaps in perception and interests. Musharraf needed a concession on Kashmir to justify his opposition to the Simla and Lahore accords. India was insistent that an "Agra declaration", if at all one was forthcoming, could not sacrifice the legacy of earlier agreements. Yet both sides seemed equally keen that the Agra Summit had to show a positive outcome. Musharraf had to placate the restive community of Islamic warriors at home and India had to ensure that political turbulence in Pakistan did not further endanger its internal security. Day Two of the Summit, by all accounts, promised to be a serious challenge for both the verbal craftsmen and the political statesmen on both sides.

It was clear when the two leaders began their slated one-to-one dialogue just before 11 a.m. on July 16 that a major effort would be needed to restore the possibility of a sustained engagement between their countries. All elements of symbolism were cut out as Vajpayee and Pervez Musharraf narrowed their focus to the substantive elements of a joint statement that would accommodate, without seeming to gloss over, the wide divergences on Kashmir.

The day's deliberations began against the background of a statement issued the previous night by Major-General Quereshi. By reaffirming the Pakistani position that a resolution of the Kashmir issue was an essential prerequisite for movement on any other matter of bilateral interest, Quereshi was obviously seeking to dispel the notion that the Pakistan side had relented in some measure on its "core concern". This impression had arisen just hours prior, as a consequence of the account of the day's negotiations conveyed by Sushma Swaraj.

A more conclusive rebuttal of Swaraj's remarks - which held the field as the Indian position until her own formal denial - was delivered by Musharraf at his breakfast meeting with leading Indian journalists. "She talked about everything - trade, prisoners of war, cross-border terrorism," said the Pakistan President, in reference to Sushma Swaraj's remarks, "but ladies and gentlemen, we spent most of our time discussing Kashmir."

The burgeoning controversy over her remarks compelled Swaraj to issue a clarification. "I am not a saboteur," she said to a group of journalists at the Agra Summit media centre. In a more broadly elaborated disavowal carried by various television networks, she admitted that Kashmir had indeed been discussed and that her sole purpose the previous day was to highlight the issues that were of priority to India.

Most observers were by then convinced that Swaraj's disclaimer of any intention to "sabotage" the talks was unnecessary. Rather, they were inclined to read the Information Minister's remarks as a sign that little progress had been made. It was becoming increasingly clear that the Indian and Pakistani delegations went in to their talks with unbridgeable differences, and these persisted through the first day of the Summit.

Musharraf made a brief concession to humour - rare in the environment of gloom that was beginning to shroud the Summit by the morning. Referring to India's insistence that Kashmir should be kept off the bargaining table, he mentioned that he had his own compulsions. If he did not insist on the primacy of Kashmir, he wryly admitted, he might as well seek to buy back his ancestral house in Delhi - at the Naharwali Haveli - and take up permanent residence there.

The most that President Musharraf was willing to concede was at the verbal plane. It was necessary to acknowledge mutually that Kashmir was the primary cause of friction between the two countries, but then if India was averse to the word "dispute", he could as well settle for "issue" as a description.

As the two leaders resumed their negotiations on the morning of July 16, a leading satellite television channel began broadcasting a recording of President Musharraf's breakfast meeting, complete with his opening remarks and the vigorous discussion that followed. This recording was reportedly obtained in accordance with a prior contractual arrangement with Pakistan TV, the only media organisation that had access to the breakfast encounter.

By this time it was becoming increasingly evident that the talks had made little headway. Musharraf's locutions at his breakfast meeting, it was assumed, reflected the Pakistan delegation's negotiating approach. This made it rather easy to appreciate why progress towards bridging basic differences was meagre. Unfortunately, little information was forthcoming from the Indian team until early on the evening of July 16, when the text of Vajpayee's opening statement at the opening day's meeting was released.

Vajpayee was revealed to have assured Musharraf that all outstanding issues between the two countries would be dealt with: "We look forward to a detailed exchange of views on all issues including that of Jammu and Kashmir. You are fully aware of our views on this subject and we have heard yours.... We are willing to address these differences and to move forward. But for this, it is important to create a conducive atmosphere. The terrorism and violence being promoted in the State from across the borders do not help to create such an atmosphere."

India had not by any accounts retreated from this affirmation of its basic position that cross-border terrorism must end for meaningful progress on Kashmir. Although the Indian delegation has revealed little and insists that the record of discussions will remain confidential, it can be inferred from the length of time the talks went on that there were some conditions specified as essential prerequisites for even a verbal concession on Kashmir: credible efforts by Pakistan to rein in the Islamic warriors, who have found a hospitable environment on its soil, and a measurable decline in the level of violence. This would logically have then raised the need for a "mechanism" to monitor progress, which was also reportedly placed on the negotiating table, though without a semblance of agreement.

By lunch time on July 16, the pessimists had gained the decisive upper hand. But then came the information that Musharraf had rescheduled his departure from Agra to visit a Sufi shrine in Ajmer. Substance had prevailed over symbolism, with the General preferring to utilise his time in continuing his discussions with Vajpayee. By early evening, deliberations were still under way and the first glimmers of an Agra declaration began to emerge. By 4-30 p.m., it was being authoritatively reported, though without attribution, that a declaration would be issued within a matter of two hours.

The dominant reality, however, was that speculation continued to hold the field in an environment of complete opacity about the status of the talks. Musharraf's change of schedule was the first positive signal to come out on the day, which opened with India and Pakistan perilously close to a breakdown of mutual communications. Yet, after working all through the previous night to arrive at an acceptable phraseology, the two delegations were nowhere nearer bridging their differences in perception even as the clock was stopped to allow the Summit to run on indefinitely. By 9 p.m., the pessimists were back in the foreground, though a last-ditch effort to salvage the cause of a joint declaration was made by the rumour that Musharraf had decided to extend his stay until the next day.

There was a point reached at the talks when both sides decided that verbal craftsmanship alone would not take them far. Differences could be only momentarily papered over. Were the two leaders to respond to the inevitable demands for clarification from their domestic constituencies, the underlying differences would break through the facade of concord. The Agra declaration, if one were issued, needed to go beyond clever turns of phrase and institute credible mechanisms. Failing that, it would be rapidly consigned to the same receptacle that houses its most recent predecessor, the Lahore Declaration.

By 9-15 p.m. on July 16, it was officially notified through the television networks that there would not be a joint declaration. Shortly afterwards, the Pakistan delegation announced a press conference by Musharraf at Jaypee Palace Hotel, the headquarters of the Indian delegation. As tired and frustrated media personnel set off in a virtual stampede, few seemed to have the inclination to think through the plausibility of a Musharraf press conference at a venue that was under a heavy Indian security blanket. It transpired instead that Musharraf was paying a farewell call on the Indian Prime Minister and would seek to conduct a press conference afterwards. All that the assembled mediapersons saw was the spectacle of his motorcade driving into the hotel premises and leaving just over an hour later. The Pakistan President left shortly afterwards, leaving several unanswered questions and much speculation in his wake.

It was revealed by Jaswant Singh the following day that Musharraf's request for a press conference could not be granted because his security routine prescribes a minimum notice period of 90 minutes for any public engagement. This was clearly an effort to put to rest any suggestion that the Pakistan President had been sent back with a parting gesture of gross discourtesy. At the same time, the mere fact that he sought to pay a farewell call on the Indian Prime Minister and then spent over an hour with him, is read as a sign that the dialogue is not dead, that it can indeed resume later this year.

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