Opinion | Columnists
Golden opportunity to bury the hatchet
Fighting the Taliban together could create a climate to resolve the Kashmir issue.
- By Kuldip Nayar, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 23:26 July 3, 2009
- Image Credit: Illustration: Guillermonro/Gulf News
New Delhi and Islamabad not being able to agree upon the place where their foreign secretaries, will meet does not augur well for bilateral relations. Both sides had to eventually agree to meet on the sidelines of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Egypt between July 11-16 because there was no other option.
In fact, in mid-June when Pakistan High Commissioner Shahid Malek called on Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon to fix the date and place for a meeting between the foreign secretaries, the 30-minute deliberations failed to produce any concrete results.
Malik reportedly gave the impression that Pakistan would not be interested in the talks if they were to discuss terrorism alone.
India's stand is that the meetings of foreign secretaries should be devoted only to terrorism, particularly the Mumbai attacks. New Delhi does not want the meeting to be taken as the resumption of composite dialogue.
On the other hand, Pakistan would like the foreign secretaries to discuss "all issues", including the process of composite dialogue. Islamabad is said to be keen on taking up the Kashmir issue, which is a part of the composite dialogue.
No doubt, India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari must have discussed the composition of the talks when they met at Yekaterinburg in Russia. After all, they instructed their respective foreign secretaries to meet in Egypt.
Now, Singh has the opportunity of meeting Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Reza Gilani at the Egypt summit. But the meeting would go waste if they had nothing to discuss, but the deadlock to discuss.
Unfortunately, Gilani has said the core issue is Kashmir.
That the Kashmir issue needs to be resolved needs no repetition. This has beleaguered the two nations for decades and has sparked off two wars apart from Kargil. New Delhi realises normal relations are impossible without addressing the Kashmir issue, but the atmosphere for such talks cannot be created without bringing the perpetrators of the Mumbai attack to justice.
India does not want Kashmir to be divided on the basis of religion.
Another difficulty that New Delhi faces is that the existing boundaries of Kashmir cannot be redrawn. The Indian Parliament, the ultimate authority, will not agree to a constitutional amendment that the alteration will entail. What can come in handy is former Pakistan president General Pervez Musharraf's reported formula, which sought to make the borders redundant and divided the state territorially.
Retired officials from India and Pakistan have gone on record as saying that they had "covered 80 per cent of the journey" to resolving the Kashmir issue.
If this is true - I know that both sides were optimistic at one point of time - there is every chance of the formula being retrieved and implemented. At some stage, the people of Jammu and Kashmir should be associated because there can be no solution without their concurrence.
In fact, India has its hands full maintaining law and order in Kashmir while not letting the people feel they are being oppressed by the state. The common man has suffered from the untrammelled powers in the hands of police. The Armed Forces (Special Power) Act has given extraordinary powers to the security forces in the Northeast and Kashmir. Democracy loses its content if the laws of an authoritarian state become part of governance.
Yet when cross-border terrorism becomes a menace, fear takes over the society. It pawns its liberty to those who assure it security or a semblance of it. Kashmir has dulled the sensitivity of even the liberals. And then there is the Taliban factor. Defence Minister A.K. Antony has accepted that the Taliban is a threat to India.
This makes the elimination of Taliban the topmost priority. At present, Pakistan and US forced plan, control and implement the operation. The Pakistani army may not like it if India were to send its forces to aid in the operation, as the US has reportedly requested, but Indian and Pakistani forces fighting side by side would create a climate in which Kashmir and other problems can be resolved in no time.
The solution lies in both the civilian and military wings in Pakistan agreeing to a détente with India. But the army has given no evidence that it wants to bury the hatchet. Its proximity to America and the military aid from Washington has made Islamabad stiffer than before.
The Singh-Gilani meeting in Egypt or the meeting of foreign secretaries will be successful only to the extent General Ashfaq Kiyani, chief of the Pakistan Army, is willing to go. Can he look at Pakistan's relations with India without bringing in the past? Normalcy between the two countries depends on that. And Washington can play an important role.
Kuldip Nayar is a former Indian high commissioner to the United Kingdom and a former Rajya Sabha member.
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