Face-off in Colombo

The much-awaited meeting in Colombo between A.B. Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif failed to make any headway, with both countries refusing to budge from their stated positions.

JOHN CHERIAN
in Colombo

THE 10th summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) held in July provided the first opportunity for Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to meet his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif. For the international media corps assembled in Colombo, this meeting was in many ways a more important event than the summit itself.

The nuclear tests conducted by India and Pakistan have brought South Asia into sharp international focus and put the Kashmir issue on the frontburner. Buoyed by the renewed international interest on Kashmir, Pakistan has been working hard to keep the issue on the boil. In the event, the dramatic escalation in the firing by Pakistani troops across the Line of Control at a time when Vajpayee and Sharif were scheduled to meet does not appear to have been a matter of coincidence.

In a letter that Vajpayee wrote to Sharif on June 14, he reiterated India's commitment to fostering peaceful and friendly relations between the two countries and developing a stable structure for cooperation. Vajpayee's proposal that the two Prime Ministers hold bilateral discussions in Colombo was accepted by Sharif. Many people expected that given the strong international pressure on Pakistan and the dire economic straits the country found itself in, Sharif would at the talks agree to resume the stalled Foreign Secretary-level discussions. However, the Indian side appears to have miscalculated Pakistan's resolve and ability to focus exclusively on Kashmir.

SRIYANTHA WALPOLA
Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee with his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif in Colombo. Behind them is former Pakistan Foreign Minister Gohar Ayub Khan.

Before Vajpayee left for Colombo, prominent diplomats, including former Foreign Secretary J.N. Dixit, urged him to accept Pakistan's challenge and place Kashmir on top of the agenda of the bilateral talks. However, once in Colombo, the Indian side decided to stick to its original strategy of insisting that the Foreign Secretary-level talks be "composite and broad-based". Indian policymakers were not willing to depart from the script that has been in place since June 1997 when, after the second round of Foreign Secretary-level talks, a joint statement was issued identifying eight subjects for discussion and providing for the setting up of a mechanism to facilitate the discussions. The subjects identified were: peace and security, including confidence building measures; Jammu and Kashmir; Siachen; Wullar Barrage Project; Sir Creek; terrorism and drug trafficking; economic and commercial cooperation; and friendly exchanges in various fields. Pakistan continues to maintain that there has been no progress in starting a meaningful discussion on the Kashmir issue and that India is playing for time. The third and last round of Foreign Secretary-level talks were held in September 1997. Since then there has been no progress in the matter of the dialogue.

Pakistan has viewed the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Government with suspicion. Its suspicions were heightened when India conducted its nuclear tests in May and, following these, senior Ministers indulged in much talk about redrawing borders, employing a proactive policy on Kashmir and so on.

Before leaving for Colombo, a senior official of the External Affairs Ministry outlined the goals that New Delhi hoped to achieve there. He said that New Delhi's first priorities were to establish "stable and good relations" with Pakistan, to work on the basis of the many commonalities that exist between the two countries and, most important, to work "bilaterally to resolve issues". He said that the Indian Government had no ill-will towards Pakistan and added that Vajpayee was genuinely committed to a "stable and prosperous Pakistan". However, he said, the dialogue process with Pakistan was hampered by the virulent Pakistani propaganda, which was against the spirit of the Simla Agreement.

GEMUNUNU AMARASINGHE/AP
Foreign Secretary K. Raghunath.

FOR its part, the Pakistani delegation made its intentions clear almost as soon as it arrived in Colombo. In the interviews he gave Western news agencies before Vajpayee and Sharif were scheduled to meet, Gohar Ayub Khan, the then Foreign Minister, made it known that the Foreign Secretary-level talks could be resumed only if Kashmir was put on top of the agenda and India reduced its troop concentration in the Kashmir Valley and recognised the All Party Hurriyat Conference as the legitimate representative of the Kashmiri people. He said Pakistan wanted the Foreign Secretary-level talks to discuss the Kashmir issue in a Working Group, with another Working Group addressing the question of "peace and security".

At every available forum, the Pakistani side made it clear that it was opposed to the June 1997 formula favoured by India. It was obvious that Pakistan was not serious about resuming Foreign Secretary-level talks at this juncture. While the Pakistani side appeared to be intent on internationalising the Kashmir issue, the Indian side, until the last day of the summit, was cautiously optimistic about the prospect of bilateral talks being resumed.

THE high point was the meeting between Vajpayee and Sharif. The two leaders met for 45 minutes on July 29. The bonhomie that was evident during the meeting between Sharif and Prime Minister I.K. Gujral during the SAARC summit in Male in 1997 was noticeably absent here. When Sharif and Gujral jointly met the media in Male, Sharif had said that Gujral was a person he could trust. This time around, when an Indian journalist asked Sharif about his impression of Vajpayee, he smiled and said that Vajpayee was "a good man". Significantly, the two leaders chose to hold separate press conferences.

Vajpayee's interaction with the media was brief and terse. After reading out a short statement, he said that he had had a "good" meeting with Sharif, at which wide-ranging issues of mutual interest were discussed. For his part, Sharif too said that he had a good meeting with Vajpayee and described the talks as "frank and candid". He made it a point to emphasise that the nuclear tests and their aftermath had also been discussed.

According to sources, at his meeting with Vajpayee, Sharif indicated that the Foreign Secretary-level talks could be resumed only if the "core"' issue of Kashmir was dealt with expeditiously, preferably by a separate Working Group. He is also said to have made clear his preference for international mediation on Kashmir. Speaking to the media, he said that all the disputes that had been resolved between the two countries over the last 50 years had been through international mediation. Pakistan's position is that the Gujral Government had agreed to have a separate Working Group on Kashmir after the Sharif-Gujral meeting in Male but New Delhi backtracked later. However, in Male itself, Indian officials had tried to distance themselves from Pakistan's interpretation of the agreement.

SHANKER CHAKRAVARTY
Foreign Secretary Shamshad Ahmad.

As expected, in Colombo, the Indian side stuck to its stand on the need to have a "comprehensive and composite" dialogue on all outstanding issues, including Kashmir. However, reflecting his country's hardened stand on Kashmir, Sharif said that even the international community had acknowledged that Kashmir was the "core issue of tension" between the two countries and added that it had to be addressed meaningfully with a view to reaching a final settlement.

Sharif also brought the issue of the nuclearisation of South Asia to the fore at his press conference. He said that the tests had added another dimension to the region's security concerns. "It is imperative that we address ourselves to the issue of nuclear and conventional restraint and stabilisation, avoidance of conflict and confidence building measures." Sharif, who denied making threatening statements after Pakistan conducted its nuclear tests, said: "There were threatening statements from India."

Although both the leaders described their talks as "good", in an interview he gave a local newspaper the next day Sharif said that the outcome of the talks amounted to "zero". The talks had ended in a "stalemate", he said, and added that the leaders were in Colombo not to "waste each other's time". This undiplomatic outburst came as a surprise to the Indian side since both Vajpayee and Sharif had, only a day earlier, given the impression that the Foreign Secretary-level talks were about to be revived. In fact, Vajpayee had said that the two sides had agreed to resume the talks. Following his leaders's example, Tariq Altaf, the Pakistan Foreign Office spokesman, virtually accused the Indian side of "unilaterally" announcing that the talks were going to be resumed. He said that Sharif had only told the media that the two sides had agreed "to continue the talks at the next available opportunity".

The last day of the summit witnessed the end of diplomatic niceties between the two sides. The otherwise soft-spoken Indian Foreign Secretary, K. Raghunath, termed Pakistan's behaviour as "neurotic" over its "obsessive" focus on a one-point agenda. Before departing for home, the Pakistani side distributed copies of a "non-paper" which proposed eight confidence building measures to reduce tension in the Jammu and Kashmir region. These included the strengthening of the team of United Nations military observers along the LoC, the release of Kashmiri militants kept under detention, the stationing of U.N. human rights monitors in the Valley, and the removal of Indian Army pickets in Srinagar. Raghunath, who rejected these, said that outside interference in Kashmir would not be tolerated. He reiterated that Kashmir would continue to remain an integral part of India.

THE international community has been exerting pressure on India and Pakistan to hold talks. U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has offered U.S. mediation to settle the dispute. After the firing along the LoC escalated recently, the U.S. sent urgent messages to the two countries urging them to exercise restraint. A U.S. State Department spokesperson said: "The volatility of Kashmir is a stark reminder of the pressing need for India and Pakistan to resolve their differences." U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has urged the two countries to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and hold talks on Kashmir.

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