PRIME MINISTER Atal Behari Vajpayee's letter to President Pervez Musharraf had invited him to walk "the high road to peace and prosperity". In turn, Musharraf lamented the fact, as he put it, that "We are so close to each other, yet so far from each other" and repeatedly stressed the historic opportunity to set aside the "negative solutions of the past", while his visit to Naharwali Haveli, his ancestral home and birthplace in Daryaganj, was billed as something resembling the return of a native. In his welcome address, President K.R. Narayanan reminded his audience that Akbar, the symbol of peace and toleration in the otherwise tortuous history of Indian statecraft, was buried at Agra and prayed: "May his spirit pervade the conference chamber tomorrow." And, indeed, Agra was chosen as the venue for the Vajpayee-Musharraf Summit for its symbolic value as the historic home of Indo-Islamic culture, with the sublime and soothing presence of the Taj Mahal as the backdrop for the parleys. In his reply to President Narayanan's welcome address, Musharraf was to declare that there was no military solution to the Kashmir issue - a theme to which he was to return several times in various forums.
As Musharraf's plane touched down and temperatures dropped to give Delhi its coolest day and greenest look of the monsoon season, even the gods seemed to be smiling on this mission for peace. The Chief of the Air Staff A.Y. Tipnis' failure to salute Musharraf at the ceremonial welcome at the Rashtrapati Bhavan was in bad taste, but Musharraf himself won countless hearts when he began his own itinerary in the city with a visit to the Raj Ghat where he and his elegant wife were shown showering rose petals on Mahatma Gandhi's samadhi. He then went on to write in the visitors' book: "Never has the requirement of his ideals been so severely felt than today, specially in the context of India-Pakistan relations. May his soul rest in peace." He thus became the first Pakistani head of state to visit the Raj Ghat, and no one could help being moved by the fact that he had launched his visit to India with a glowing homage to the self-same Gandhi who is regarded by mainstream India as an apostle of peace and non-violence but is anathema to Pakistan's extremists and super-patriots from whom Musharraf is increasingly distancing himself.
In the course of the day, he had the wit to meet individually and separately with Home Minister L.K. Advani and Foreign-cum-Defence Minister Jaswant Singh, both prime ministerial aspirants and clearly the most powerful members in the Vajpayee Cabinet. When Jaswant Singh protested against the contempt he had shown for the Lahore Declaration in particular and even, at times, for the Simla accord, Musharraf took to denying that he had ever dismissed those agreements. He repeated the denial several times over the next couple of days, clarifying that his government was bound by those agreements and his only point was that neither agreement had secured the peace and both countries now needed to re-assess the causes for that failure. The list of indictments that Advani delivered to him in the course of 20 minutes was the first volley in India's insistence during the Summit on "cross-border terrorism" which ranged from Kashmir to the Bombay blasts to Sikh extremism and beyond.
This was the list that was to be expanded and emphasised in Vajpayee's own opening statement at the start of the Agra Summit, which was inexplicably released by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) the next day. This act deliberately aggravated a situation which had been aggravated already the night before by Sushma Swaraj, the unbridled Minister for Information and Broadcasting, who had equally deliberately omitted any mention of Kashmir as even one of the subjects that had been discussed between the two heads of state. The omission made life difficult for Musharraf and forced the Pakistan delegation to issue a strong statement asserting that Kashmir had been discussed extensively.
If India's tough line was first stated in Advani's meeting, the luncheon that Vajpayee hosted that first day had an embarrassing moment for Musharraf, when Farooq Abdullah strode up to him and introduced himself, quite accurately, as "the elected Chief Minister" of Jammu and Kashmir. In return, the well-publicised invitation to leaders of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) for the tea party at the Pakistan High Commissioner's residence that evening was Pakistan's way of expressing its uncompromising stance. Strictly speaking, the Pakistan High Commissioner was well within his rights to do so, considering that he had invited a very broad spectrum of Indians, ranging from leaders of the CPI(M) to Agnishekhar of Panun Kashmir. The decision of the ruling National Democratic Alliance to boycott the party in protest against the presence of the Hurriyat leaders, whom the government rightly considers Indian citizens and often confers with, was at best unseemly.
On two counts, however, Pakistan's handling of the affair was somewhat ham-handed. One was that the host government had apparently requested Musharraf not to hold that highly publicised meeting, and Pakistan should have been graceful in this matter in the larger interests of cordiality at the Summit. Second, if the Hurriyat leaders had to be invited, Pakistan could greatly improve its own image if Musharraf had also explicitly invited people like Farooq Abdullah and Dr. Karan Singh, thus indicating that he was interested in a dialogue with the whole range of political and religious spectrums in the Indian part of Jammu and Kashmir.
Before the tea party, though, General Musharraf also held an hour-long informal meeting for exchange of views with an assorted group of journalists, academics, ex-diplomats and politicians - all billed as 'intellectuals' - at which Frontline was represented by its Editor, N. Ram, and the present writer. Here, one could see at close quarters a no-nonsense soldier who was also affable, articulate, impatient for solutions, ready to discuss other issues but focussed overwhelmingly on Kashmir, and in his own way open and flexible, relatively unmindful of the niceties and precisions of diplomatic language. The impatience was evident even in his suggestion that a "framework" be set for negotiations toward a final solution along with a "time-frame" in which, he thought, the matter could be settled within a year. Quite aside from the personal attitude, at least three aspects of his remarks were significant. One, his quite genuine belief, an example of which we shall see below, that, as he put it, "The road ahead needs compromises from both sides. By this I don't mean one-sided compromises... We know the internal problems of India and the internal problems of Pakistan. We need to rise above those problems. This needs boldness, courage, statesmanship."
Second, although he spoke at great length about Kashmir, it was significant that he began with the vision of an "economic association" in South Asia. Every other region of the world was moving in the direction of such associations, he said with the single exception of our region. In the context of this economic cooperation, he then went on to state his enthusiastic support for the projected Indo-Iranian gas pipeline to be laid through Pakistani territory. "We will adhere to international norms" in facilitating it and providing the requisite security, he said.
Third, it was very striking that in the course of an hour, much of which was devoted to the Kashmir issue, Musharraf did not ever mention either the Hurriyat or the United Nations Resolutions, the two stock themes of Pakistan's public pronouncements on the issue. He was to then repeat these significant omissions in his later breakfast meeting with India's senior Editors and mediapersons on the second day of the Agra Summit, where too the emphasis was on flexibility. When forced to address the question of the U.N. Resolutions by a question from the floor, he pointed out that India too had accepted them but then went on to say that the Resolutions too could be "discussed" - not "implemented", as Pakistan's historic position has it. "We must not allow the past to dictate the future," he said, repeating a line that seems to have become a favourite with him.
Simply dismissing earlier inflexibilities, Musharraf declared at the meeting that "one could negate certain solutions", that "a number of possible solutions" can be considered and that "I am willing to look at any option" - apparently including the so-called 'third option' of an independent Kashmir. Indeed, his flexibilty was so great that a seasoned journalist like Shekhar Gupta of The Indian Express, who was present at the meeting and then spent much time and energy on New Delhi Television's Star News programme dissecting the event, seemed positively agitated by the speed with which Musharraf was moving and offering various options; no seasoned politician would offer so much so soon, he kept saying in disbelief and in the tone of a reprimand, as if the ill-famed "architect of Kargil" had landed in Agra as an architect of peace and the Indian government simply did not know what to do with the pressure of these concessions.
Those of us who had met Musharraf earlier in Delhi noticed that same tendency to brush aside older inflexibilties in pursuit of a dialogue. The emphasis, rather, was on flexibility. My English is not very good, he said lightly, so if India has problems with the phrase "Kashmir dispute", let us just call it an "issue" or a "problem". On his insistent formulation that "Kashmir is the core issue", he again said: "Let us find another word, another adjective. What I mean is that this is the issue on which we have fought wars." The manner was warm and charming, the logic impeccable. One knew, however, that as a competent staff officer he must have done his homework and this seemingly casual de-escalation from "dispute" to "issue" was performed with deliberation, since he too must have known that the status of Kashmir as "disputed territory" has been sacrosanct in the Pakistani lexicon whereas "territory" need not even figure much in the resolution of an "issue" or a "problem". He was offering a significant concession and expected India to reciprocate by accepting, in this less charged language, that Kashmir was indeed the main problem, which he could then take back to Pakistan as a concession he had gained. India's refusal to do so contributed substantially to the subsequent collapse of the Summit, as we shall see.
AS the Summit began to unfold, one could not help comparing its context with that of those earlier and famous summits which had given us the Simla accord and the Lahore Declaration. Indeed, the fact that it was the first Summit to be held in India in the period where electronic media has become so dominant and invasive meant that it could not be allowed to be compared with those other very many occasions when Indian and Pakistani heads of state have met without producing any spectacular results; this one had to be spectacular if it was to succeed at all in the eyes of TV cameras and the roving commentators who need to manufacture an excitement every half an hour. Within this context, then, the contrast between this Summit and those other two could not be sharper. Some reminder of those earlier summits is also necessary because Pakistan's discomfort with those agreements as "insufficient" has often been portrayed as "rejection" or "repudiation", a charge that re-surfaced at Jaswant Sigh's press conference on the day after the Summit even though Musharraf had been publicly re-affirming Pakistan's adherence to those agreements. The charge of "rejection" is facetious but we should also understand Pakistan's discomfort.
The Simla Summit had taken place under the shadow of India's total victory in Bangladesh and Pakistan's vivisection with some 90,000 of its soldiers held in India. Indian super-patriots tend to complain that Indira Gandhi conceded too much and that she should have rather imposed India's will in Kashmir, once and for all. That is actually not how the Simla accord is viewed in Pakistan. In their version, India demanded - and obtained - from Pakistan the same language on what now came to be known as the Line of Control (LoC) which Pakistan had conceded to China in the settlement of their boundary dispute. It is significant that what has been a most quiescent Sino-Pakistan border also has the official status of a Line of Control, and it simply assumed that the peace shall not be disturbed and the line shall be simply treated as if it was a final border. Indian insistence on that language was designed to obtain precisely that result, and that is why India as well as the Western powers always insist on the "sanctity" of the LoC which the respective forces must not cross; and that is why infiltration of even irregular combatants across this line can be designated as "cross-border terrorism".
Be that as it may. Pakistan considers that agreement as one that was extracted from it in a moment of defeat, even though it kept the peace for some two decades. It began to be violated only with the onset of full-scale insurgency in Kashmir around 1988-89. It does not reject the agreement officially but resents it and, in what it regards as its right to support "the struggle of the Kashmiri people for liberation", it does not feel constrained to respect the LoC entirely. Musharraf's achievement is that since India's recent declaration of something resembling a ceasefire, the LoC has been quieter than at any point in recent memory. Nawaz Sharif certainly gave India no such respite.
The Lahore Summit, meanwhile, was held under the shadow of the great political destabilisation caused by the nuclear explosions at Pokhran and Chagai which had suddenly elevated Kashmir, in American eyes in particular, as a "nuclear flashpoint." The Summit was held, in other words, under direct foreign pressure and simply to prove to the U.S. that there was no perceptible immediate threat of a nuclear conflagration in South Asia. It was not a response to conditions prevailing in Jammu and Kashmir which could have put India in a serious dilemma, or to the kind of internal crisis that prevails today in Pakistan. The euphoria at that time was quite disproportionate to the actual gains made by either side, and the great haste was denounced in Pakistan by senior civilian officers and military commanders alike. Musharraf was one of the dissidents at the time and when he says today "I am a realist and cannot push reality under the carpet" he is referring to his perception that the Indian version of the "composite dialogue" strategy was accepted in Lahore in such a way that, as he sees it, the "reality" of Kashmir was "pushed under the carpet". That is the imbalance he now seeks to correct, which is why he keeps harping on his demand that the "composite dialogue" not replace the "centrality" of the "core issue" of Kashmir.
THE Agra Summit was different in many ways. There was certainly foreign, notably U.S., pressure but, unlike Lahore, that was not the main factor. Nor was it held under the shadow of a spectacular event like Pakistan's defeat in Bangladesh or the nuclear explosions. Unlike Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who had come to salvage what he could from a military defeat, and unlike Nawaz Sharif who displeased his military commanders with his inordinate effusiveness, Musharraf has come to India with great strengths. He commands absolute political and military power in institutional terms, has built a very great and extensive consensus behind himself (including the whole spectrum of the Islamicist establishment, minus a couple of jehadi groups which rely heavily on Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, anyway), and he has put in place a quasi-democratic electoral process which is most likely to bestow legitimacy upon him by the end of next year.
Moreover, he has been preparing for (virtually demanding) this Summit for well over a year, feeling that he is in a strong position because the insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir continues unabated and all the alternatives to negotiations with Pakistan which India has attempted - ceasefire with the Hizbul Mujahideen, the unilateral ceasfire of its own, the K.C. Pant mission - have failed. His one great weakness is the state of Pakistan's economy, but any idea that the national economy there is on the verge of collapse is nonsensical; for one thing, and thanks mainly to its geo-strategic location and size, Pakistan is too important for the Big Powers - the U.S., China, even Russia - for them to allow the kind of instability that comes with economic collapse. He is willing to talk of two-sided compromises and even offer some adjustments in Pakistan's historic postures for a variety of reasons.
First, he feels strong enough to do so provided that India reciprocates. Second, his government understands that the size of the Indian economy and the sophistication of Indian military capabilities is such that it would be suicidal for Pakistan to enter into an arms race, whether in the conventional or the nuclear arena. Third, with the exception of the jehadi groups and popular movements in a few districts of central Punjab, he commands an immense majority in favour of peace; if he can get some reciprocal concessions from India he can expand that majority in the process and make himself more popular. Fourth, it is in the interest of his personal power - and he believes it to be in the interest of his country - that jehadi elements in the population at large and in the military establishment be isolated and controlled, which he cannot do in a full sweep without showing movement on the Kashmir issue. Fifth, this interest in containing the jehadi elements gets an enormous boost thanks to the pressure from not only the U.S. but also China and even Russia, not to speak of Iran which feels threatened by the Sunni orthodoxy of the Pakistani (and Afghan) jehadis. These and many other such factors are impelling him to conceive genuinely of a compromise solution, and it is myopic of India not to seize the opportunity or to learn how to deal with a strong but flexible ruler of a weak neighbour. When Musharraf says that India is a great, powerful country which should act in such a way as to preserve the honour and dignity of weaker neighbours, he is indeed recommending to us what should be a cardinal principle of our policy.
That the desire for peace is just as strong among broad cross-sections of Indians became clear from the way his very image got transformed in the popular perceptions by the end of the first day. It was of course in the nature of things that the guest got a lot more media coverage than the hosts. There is of course the cultural difference wherein Pakistanis are a lusty, flamboyant lot whereas officious primness comes as if naturally to their Indian counterparts, who appeared aloof, even sullen, throughout the Summit.
But there were also matters of substance as well as of personal style, so that Musharraf was able to project himself as a forthright man, as clear in his objectives as in his flexibility. By the end of his first day, which he spent in Delhi, most people had simply forgotten the familiar language of "the architect of Kargil" and "Know Your Enemy No 1", to be replaced by genuine excitement and even expectation of a genuine breakthrough, which got translated into outright euphoria by the end of the first day at Agra.
RICH in rhetoric, symbolism and even opportunity, the Agra Summit kept lurching from exhilaration to impasse, disinformation to breakthrough, hope to high drama to exhaustion, before collapsing in the most disgraceful manner possible, so disgraceful indeed that none of what had been achieved could be salvaged. Soon after mid-day on the second and last day, television channels showed Abdul Sattar, the seasoned Foreign Minister of Pakistan, telling mediapersons that a "declaration" was "probable". For some 10 hours, solemn commentators on the various channels pondered over the difference between "declaration" and "statement". Around four o'clock, Musharraf's departure for Ajmer was finally cancelled, and the channels construed the cancellation as a harbinger of a breakthrough. By 10 p.m. or so, as rumours of an impending collapse swirled around, despondency began to set in, and the dimmest sliver of hope was attached to the fact that Musharraf had gone for a quick farewell visit to Vajpayee but had stayed well over an hour. Suddenly, close to midnight, all that one could see on the TV channels were the tail-lights of the speeding cars and vans that were taking the Pakistan delegation to the airport. In a hurriedly organised press conference, the MEA issued a one-line statement and refused to take questions. The Pakistanis spoke only after arriving back in Islamabad.
What had gone wrong? First of all, the utter lack of preparation, especially on India's part. Clearly India had extended the invitation without knowing what it wanted, and when Musharraf started demonstrating his flexibility, New Delhi was bewildered. He could do so, we were told by ponderous media pundits, because he was an absolute ruler, whereas a democratically elected Prime Minister could not take any such steps without holding consultations. But virtually the whole government was there in Agra, in addition to the Prime Minister himself: Home, Defence, External Affairs, Finance, Commerce, Information, what have you. Moreover, what worth is Vajpayee's unique status if he cannot take a decision, and why was an agendaless Summit organised between two men, assisted by their respective teams, if one of those men could not think on his feet and respond quickly? Why did we not anticipate what was coming? Why was a situation allowed to develop in which Pakistanis were briefing the media and Musharraf himself was constantly talking to the broadest spectrum of opinion-makers, aside from his four sessions with Vajpayee, while Indian officials gave no briefings, except the wilfully disastrous one by Sushma Swaraj who simply hijacked the prerogatives of the MEA? How did it come about that a deadlock that lasted for roughly 12 hours was perceived by all the commentators as the prelude to a great and imminent breakthrough?
Musharraf obviously spent his last hour or more in Agra pleading with Vajpayee to give him a little glimmer of hope to take back to the peace lobby in Pakistan. Why invite him and then treat him with such imperious arrogance that even ordinary civilities are dropped, even though he had been most deferential and respectful toward all our leaders, from the late Mahatma Gandhi to the current President and Prime Minister? Would there be any justification in criticising him, as we undoubtedly shall, if he goes back and tells his people that India is simply not prepared for peace and is preparing for even larger military operations in Kashmir?
This is bizarre behaviour on the part of a government that has run so thoroughly out of options. Ceasefires and restraints have come and gone. The Hurriyat has been irretrievably alienated, for the forseeable future at least. Even autonomy cannot be negotiated with Farooq Abdullah because he cannot negotiate on behalf of those who have the gun. Shall we now resurrect the pitiable Pant?
Jaswant Singh's three points in explaining the failure of the Summit the next day were singularly unhelpful. First, he alleged that Pakistan had a "unifocal" agenda only to discuss Kashmir; but at the end of the first day his own colleague, Sushma Swaraj, had given a long list of subjects that she said Musharraf had discussed with Vajpayee. Second, he wrongly alleged that Pakistan had rejected the Simla accord and the Lahore Declaration, despite Musharraf's repeated public clarifications. Third, there was the singular emphasis on "cross-border terrorism" which seems to underlie India's own "unifocal" plank. It is significant that while Musharraf was in Delhi and Agra, pitched battles were fought between the Indian armed forces on the one hand, the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Harkat-ul-Ansar on the other, the two jehadi outfits with bases in Pakistan who have rejected Musharraf's peace initiatives. Can he control them so very quickly? When India declared a policy of restraint within Kashmir, Musharraf responded with withdrawal of Pakistani forces from the LoC and significant cuts in the defence budget. Is it reasonable for India to demand that he put an end to Pakistan's historic support to the insurgency without also responding to the concessions he seems to be offering?
That the Summit took place is itself an advance. It will now open the way for other meetings, on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly meeting in September and help re-start the SAARC process. Musharraf's invitation to Vajpayee and the latter's acceptance of it is in place; may the return visit come soon and lead to more such visits. "Islamabad is closer to Delhi than to Karachi," Musharraf reminded India on the desired frequency of visits. Not the least gain of the Summit has been that Pakistan's viewpoint was expounded from Indian TV channels for tens of hours by some of their most competent spokespersons.
But there is also an overwhelming fear. Budging not an inch from their own positions, Vajpayee and Jaswant Singh have been very vociferous about India's resolve to extinguish 'terrorism'. Having run out of other options and having then spurned Pakistani overtures, the government may well step up its military operations in Kashmir itself, with predictable mass misery for the Kashmiri people.
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