Singh's assessment of Musharraf as sincere won the day

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's one on one meeting with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has placed him firmly in the driving seat with his positive assessment of the general overturning the Foreign Office's focus on cross border infiltration.

The Prime Minister in his most recent remarks has said that the Pakistan President is a leader "we can do business with".

Singh described to reporters on board his flight back from New York that the joint statement was issued after what he termed an "unusual encounter".

It has no reference to cross border infiltration, an issue that the Prime Minister himself had insisted was central to the peace dialogue a day before the "historic" meeting, though it commits both leaders to a negotiated settlement of Kashmir.

Singh acknowledged that he had used the one hour meeting to size up Musharraf and to formulate an opinion about his personality. Certainly, the impression given by both leaders is that the decision to go forward was based on their personal assessments of each other and not a considered foreign policy initiative.

Sources here pointed out that while this was to be expected from Musharraf, the Prime Minister should have made the joint statement appear to be a more calculated exercise than just a shift in policy based on a personal assessment, more so as the Indian establishment's views on the general have changed so dramatically from time to time.

The Indian Army does not share the prime minister's confidence in Musharraf and even those officers supportive of a pull back from Siachen make it very clear that this should only be done after the necessary guarantees.

Retired General A.P.S. Chauhan, who was involved in Operation Meghdoot, said Siachen was not a military necessity, but had become a national necessity.

He said that no army in the world could be happy sitting on top of a glacier and an agreement with Pakistan to bring back the troops to lower heights was welcome provided the army was geared up operationally to strike back hard in case of any violation of the agreement. Senior army officers who voiced considerable admiration for Musharraf as a "tough soldier" insisted that "he cannot be trusted where India is concerned."

Those who were supportive of the peace process said that it was important to assess him correctly, to protect India's flanks, and not to leave openings that could be taken undue advantage of. Singh has justified the decision to move ahead for a negotiated settlement on Kashmir on his personal assessment of the President.

The decision has also brought an end to Foreign Natwar Singh's policy insisting that Pakistan stop support to militants as a precursor to forward movement on Kashmir front.

The widespread impression is that the meeting between Singh and US President George W. Bush had served as an important input into the desire for peace that replaced his concerns over cross border infiltration with a commitment to recognise Kashmir as central to dialogue process.

Foreign policy experts have also noted the fact that the credit for the substantive shift in policy has been taken by the Prime Minister.

It is also his assessment of Musharraf as a "sincere" leader that has carried the day, over and above the suspicions of the general's intent formulated by the Foreign Office in special briefings since the new government came to power.

- The Asian Age