Trust deficit

India squanders a chance to take the dialogue process with Pakistan forward.

in Islamabad

INDIA has walked away with the honours of being the spoiler in the India-Pakistan foreign ministerial engagement of July 15. Not that much was expected from the meeting, but no one had bargained for the verbal duel that ensued between the representatives of the two countries after the pitch was queered by the sound bytes provided by Indian state actors.

It all began with Indian Home Secretary G.K. Pillai's comment to a newspaper that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was involved in the Mumbai 2008 terror attacks from start to finish. The comment came on the very morning External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna was leaving for Islamabad.

Although Krishna apparently told the Pakistani side that Pillai's comment was uncalled for and has since gone on record that it was ill-timed, the Minister did obliquely endorse the Home Secretary's contention. In fact, in his first comments on landing in Islamabad, he made a reference to David Coleman Headley, the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist arrested in the United States in connection with the Mumbai attack, and he repeated it in the next couple of hours.

And these were not off-the-cuff responses to media queries. Reading out from a prepared statement upon arrival in Pakistan, Krishna said: I also look forward to receiving feedback on the issues raised by our Home Minister during his visit to Pakistan last month on our core concern of terrorism, particularly in the light of the discussions our Home Minister had in Pakistan in the context of the interrogation of David Coleman Headley regarding the Mumbai terrorist attack.

Within the next couple of hours, Krishna repeated his reference to Headley twice first to non-Kannada television crew and news agencies accompanying him, and then separately to the Kannada media. Headley's interrogation has revealed many things, and the whole world is aware that he has been interrogated not in India but in the United States by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Hence, India cannot be faulted for that. So I'm sure Pakistan would have taken due note of what Headley had revealed in his interrogation in the U.S., and India naturally expects a response from Pakistan. I'm here to find out what that response is.

Probably burdened by its position as the host, Pakistan did not officially react to these statements on July 14 and even the next day. But at his joint press conference with Krishna, Pakistan Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mehmood Qureshi broke the silence by referring to Pillai's statement and also Jamaa-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed's anti-India diatribes. Since then, the gloves have been off with Qureshi pulling no punches.

Ahead of the meeting, Pakistani journalists who had sought interviews and sound bites from the media-friendly Minister were told he would not speak before the ministerial engagement a gesture that was not reciprocated by Krishna in a relationship hinged on reciprocity.

Strategic affairs experts, while conceding the compulsions of Krishna to say something since he was travelling with a large media contingent, maintained that he could have avoided chanting Headley's name, more so when Pillai had already muddied the waters. Do appreciate that Pakistan refused to get provoked into making a statement despite media pressure, said a former Foreign Secretary, who also pondered why information conveyed to Islamabad during the Home Ministers' meeting had to be flagged publicly on the eve of this crucial engagement.

Pakistan is understood to have communicated to the Indian delegation during an informal dinner hosted by Qureshi for Krishna on the eve of the talks that it found Pillai's public statements very disturbing. And until about 12 hours before the formal talks began, the general understanding was that all issues would be discussed though India was expected to harp on credible action in the Mumbai case.

Disappointed by the way things turned out, Tanvir Ahmad Khan, chairman of the Institute of Strategic Studies, the Pakistan Foreign Office-funded think tank, said: After the two engagements in June and Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao's address to the Delhi Policy Group, the understanding was that India would give primacy to Mumbai but it would not be the only issue on the table.

Krishna also held that position in his first statement on Pakistani soil when he read out: We hope to discuss all issues of mutual interest and concern. This, according to the Foreign Office, was the mandate given to the two Ministers by their respective Prime Ministers in Thimphu. So Pakistan entered the talks hoping that all issues would be dealt with in tandem, but India brought up the graduated approach where issues of concern to it were to be given priority and others relegated to second grade.

For four years, India, according to Pakistan, sought to categorise the eight segments on which composite dialogue took place into three categories. Priority was given to terrorism, trade and commerce and Sir Creek. Relegating Kashmir to the third slot was unacceptable to Pakistan. Its Foreign Office's contention is: Kashmir was burning just ahead of the talks and every day television channels were beaming those images. So, we had to take it up forcefully. Putting it on the back burner would have been suicidal for us. If we could understand India's domestic compulsions over the Mumbai attacks, why can't India understand ours? Talking about Kashmir does not mean we have to reach a conclusion immediately. But the two sides should also talk about our core concerns.

For Pakistan, already bristling because of Pillai's frontal attack on the ISI, India's refusal to take on board its concerns served as the proverbial last straw. Time and again both during the run-up to the talks and after the Pakistan Foreign Office maintained that dialogue between equals could not be conditional. And the general refrain is that Pakistan does not succumb to pressure easily as far as India is concerned.

Strengthening hardliners

Imtiaz Gul, chairman of the Centre for Research and Security Studies (CRSS) in Pakistan, wants to know how India can hope to get things done without showing some spirit of accommodation and sign of appreciation for the situation in Pakistan. As it is, Pakistan is holding out to pressure from the United States.

There might be a democratic structure in place in Pakistan, but the political landscape of the country is still embedded in its military establishment. This is the harsh reality, Gul asserts, adding that the Army is the only interlocutor even for the U.S. This was evident from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's journey to Rawalpindi to meet the Army chief. Indian pressure will only strengthen the hardliners, says the CRSS chief. Gul points out that Krishna created trouble for the government by stating that Pakistan had not provided a shred of evidence on Indian involvement in the unrest in Baluchistan. I'm sure something must have been shared with India; how can you expect them to stay quiet when you are insulting them in public?

While Krishna dodged the leading question on Balochistan, Qureshi did not make much of it either and matters would probably have rested there had not a note been sent to the Indian Minister by his officials.

This intervention by Krishna in which he took a more strident position on Balochistan and infiltration into Kashmir saw Qureshi shoot back. And the painfully cultivated facade of cooperation fell apart piece by piece.

The fireworks at the joint press conference apart, Tanvir Ahmad said that accepting the Indian insistence on graduated talks was made all the more difficult for Pakistan by the imminent changes in the transit trade agreement with Afghanistan pushed by the U.S.

According to Qureshi, Afghanistan was pushing for to-and-fro trade with India through the Wagah border. After seven rounds of discussions, the two sides agreed on July 18 that Afghan goods could be taken up to Wagah for export to India but there would be no return arrangement.

In turn, Pakistan managed to export its goods to Central Asia by land through Afghanistan. Still, the Pakistan government has had to do a considerable amount of explaining since July 17.

Lacking maturity

The refrain in Islamabad is that India failed to show the maturity that characterises a seasoned democracy. Why India failed to capitalise on the mood that had set in in both countries after the Foreign Secretaries' meeting in Islamabad in June and when they spoke in one voice is something that baffles most strategic analysts and foreign policy experts who had told the Foreign Office to make best of this chance to bridge the trust deficit.

In fact, ahead of the talks, some of them had raised questions about India's sincerity in taking the dialogue forward.

An influential constituency in Pakistan that believes New Delhi returned to the negotiating table not out of conviction but because its no-talk strategy had run out of steam or was under pressure from common friends. They stand vindicated and the peaceniks isolated, if not silenced by India's hardline approach.

Given that nothing moves here on strategic matters without the consent of the establishment, this round of talks has cemented in the Pakistani mindscape the notion that India is no different and whatever Prime Minister Manmohan Singh may want, he is hemmed in. Still, in case of any resolve from India to stay the course of the dialogue, the counsel from the middle-of-the-road Pakistani is: Don't talk down to us and push us publicly; the more that happens, the more difficult it becomes to deliver. Do quiet diplomacy, please.