Modest returns

Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee raises the prospect of India's accession to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty with a view to inducing the U.S. to accommodate India's sensitivities, but the big prize remains elusive.

SUKUMAR MURALIDHARAN

SUMMING up the outcome of his longest overseas visit since assuming office, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee claimed to have fostered a greater understanding of India's interests and concerns at the global level. In terms of concrete achievement, India had opened up a strategic dialogue with France and won a commitment of closer cooperation in the defence and civilian nuclear sectors. And neighbourhood diplomacy with Pakistan had been resumed after months of sullen disengagement and rancour, an event that Vajpayee had just a week earlier characterised as a new dawn in relations between the estranged nations.

The big prize, however, proved elusive. Vajpayee had raised the prospect of accession to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) as an inducement to the United States. There was an expectation that as a reciprocal concession the U.S. would change its rules of engagement in the Asian continent to accommodate India's sensitivities. This simply failed to materialise. Qualified words of endorsement came from the U.S. State Department and President Bill Clinton, who was later authorised by the U.S. Congress to waive mandatory sanctions against India and Pakistan for a year in order to manoeuvre for greater leverage in regional issues. But the promise of the authority being exercised remained unfulfilled, the prospect of a visit by the U.S. President to the sub-continent receded, and influential members of the U.S. Senate expressed themselves forcefully against any kind of a deal with India in order to facilitate its accession to the CTBT.

If it is further noted that the resumption of talks between India and Pakistan had been agreed at the meeting between the Foreign Secretaries of the two countries at the Durban summit of the Non-Aligned Movement, the direct benefits of Vajpayee's most recent overseas foray would seem rather modest. Discussions with Pakistan will focus on the broad range of issues - eight in all - identified after Foreign Secretary-level talks in June last year. Two of the eight issues - "peace and security, including confidence building measures" and "Jammu and Kashmir" - are of particular interest to Pakistan, which has insisted that they should be discussed on an altogether different basis of negotiations. India has, in contrast, insisted that these two should be addressed along with the other six, which include among other things, cultural exchanges, economic cooperation and the Siachen dispute, in a combined initiative.

RICHARD DREW/AP
Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee addresses the United Nations General Assembly on September 24.

The New York agreement between Vajpayee and his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif, which was, interestingly enough, announced prior to their formal meeting, concedes the principle that peace and security and Kashmir warrant special treatment. This undoubtedly represents a retreat by India, although few seem prepared to admit it at this stage. Further, it is clear that this retreat has been signalled as a direct response to international pressures following the virulent outbreak of animosities on the Indo-Pakistani border in the aftermath of the nuclear tests in May.

A curious reticence also is apparent in spelling out the full details of the negotiating agenda on Kashmir. But if past is prologue, the differences are likely to be irreconcilable. Shortly after agreeing to discuss Kashmir in June 1997, India had clarified that the only detail to be addressed was the cessation of Pakistan's sustenance for militant activity in Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan, which doggedly clings to the idea of a United Nations-mandated reference to the wishes of the people of Kashmir, rejected the notion out of hand, following which the talks floundered.

On the Kashmir issue, the stated objectives of the two sides - India's intention to vacate Pakistani occupation of a part of Kashmir and Pakistan's insistence that a plebiscite be conducted in the State - are devoid of the least element of practicality. The principal hazard in the new phase of negotiations is not that of a precipitate and rather predictable breakdown, but that of a disproportionate share of the blame for such an outcome falling on India. In June 1997, India was perceived as a magnanimous neighbour, willing to talk terms with Pakistan even though a semblance of normal political activity had been restored in the troubled region. Today, India is distinctly in a defensive mode as the implications of the fateful linkage established between neighbourhood animosities and the nuclear tests of May begin to work themselves out.

THERE is a conflict inherent in the situation, between the global ambitions and perspectives that India has sought to project on the nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation front and the neighbourhood disputes that it is increasingly being confined within. A sense of disquiet at this conflict was evident in Vajpayee's address to the Asia Society in New York on September 28.

Despite being "natural allies" in their adherence to democratic values and their common quest for a "better future", India and the U.S., Vajpayee claimed, remained divided by mutual suspicions. This was entirely on account of American insensitivities, particularly the U.S.' "reluctance" to accept India as "a responsible member of the international community". Vajpayee cited a range of issues where the U.S. failed to "appreciate and accommodate India's interests and concerns".

Vajpayee's speech at the Asia Society was variously read as a forceful admonition of the U.S. and as a cry from the heart, a manifesto of resentment at India's relatively subordinate position within U.S. strategic designs. Either way, it made explicit what had been tacitly signalled in a series of moves since the nuclear tests - that their underlying intent was to force the U.S. into a more accommodating posture, if necessary by shedding its entrenched patron-client relationship with Pakistan and coopting India into a position of regional pre-eminence. This is a strategic perspective that many within India have understandable reservations about. And while the domestic debate on this issue is yet to be joined, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Government today finds that the whole strategic gambit has perhaps meandered into a dead-end.

JON LEVY/REUTERS
Vajpayee with Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at their meeting in New York on September 23.

In his capacity as special envoy of the Prime Minister, Jaswant Singh conducted another in his series of meetings with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott on the sidelines of Vajpayee's engagements. In conformity with the established pattern, little of substance emerged from their talks, except for a mutual undertaking to meet again in November. Jaswant Singh's brief, it is now being increasingly recognised, is to bargain for a waiver of the various technology denial regimes that the U.S. has invoked against India. This would, the argument runs, be the minimal acceptable reward for India's accession to the CTBT.

As a bargaining posture, this seems increasingly to be fraying. Three influential members of the U.S. Senate, including majority leader Trent Lott and Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms, recently warned President Clinton not to take recourse to any such bargaining tack. As far as the U.S. is concerned, there are few rewards to be earned from accession to the CTBT and fewer still in holding out.

Given the bleak outlook as far as the engagement with the U.S. is concerned, there is little solace to be derived from the breakthrough with France. Always a reluctant participant in the U.S.-orchestrated strategic consensus, France is alive to the commercial potentialities of military cooperation with India. It has in recent times sought to interpret the regime of nuclear and missile export controls imposed under U.S. tutelage as a voluntary matter. But it is unlikely to step far out of line of the U.S. diktat in any future relationship with India.

AS far as India is concerned, the cycle of diplomatic overtures that began with the nuclear tests in May seem to have culminated in an uneasy dialogue with an adversarial neighbour. Vital moral capital may have been squandered in the process. Pakistan has lost no opportunity in world councils to call for a strict vigil over India's participation in the talks. Although conforming to India's requirement that the talks should be strictly bilateral, the mere fact that external pressure has brought the two countries to the negotiating table is to be construed as a setback. To a great extent, this was virtually foretold from the time the BJP-led Government embarked upon its nuclear adventure in May.

Former Prime Minister I.K. Gujral, now slipping with ease into the role of an elder statesman, sees the resumption of dialogue with Pakistan as a clear gain. Although he says that the course of the talks will depend upon the points that either side will raise, he underlines the importance of keeping Pakistan continually engaged. That process began in June 1997 and survived Pakistan's early effort to paint India as the recalcitrant element obstructing progress. And although the subjects have been agreed, discord has surrounded the mechanisms of the talks. The mechanism now conceived is as good as any other, says Gujral, and should not unduly influence the substance of the talks.

Although Gujral emphasises that a tone of optimism has an intrinsic value in international engagements, he is less than convinced of the value of the talks with the U.S. After five rounds of talks between Talbott and Jaswant Singh, the Vajpayee Government seemed to indicate that many of India's interests would be accommodated. But the sixth round held in New York has been a decisive setback. By disregarding diplomatic niceties and portraying Pakistan as the more amenable negotiating partner, the U.S. has administered a severe rebuff to India. An early casualty could be the spirit of internal consensus that has underpinned Indian foreign policy all these years, fears Gujral. And although the outlook could improve with the resumption of talks in the neighbourhood and the conclusion of congressional elections in the U.S., the graph of India's global fortunes today seems distinctly to be dipping.

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