INDIA & PAKISTAN

An aborted deal?

If an agreement between India and Pakistan to resolve the Kargil crisis as early as June 27 was indeed aborted, clearly, some people in New Delhi wanted to flourish a military victory for electoral ends, in preference to an early diplomatic solu tion.

A. G. NOORANI

WAS there indeed an Indo-Pakistan agreement to resolve the Kargil crisis which was "upset" as a consequence of talks between India and the United States? On July 28, The Hindu published a brief excerpt from a report in The News, a Lahore da ily edited by Maleeha Lodhi, about a "four-point" agreement which Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was to sign with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in New Delhi while the former was on his way back from Beijing. The News wrote: "It was on the after noon of June 27 that it all appeared to have been finalised. On his way to Beijing Nawaz Sharif would fly over Indian territory. While doing so he would send a goodwill message to his Indian counterpart. In response to the Pakistani Prime Minister's mess age, Vajpayee would invite him to visit Delhi, to make a technical stop. Responding to Vajpayee's invitation, Nawaz Sharif would stop in Delhi on his way back from China. In Delhi the two Prime Ministers were to sign the four-point finalised agreement."

In fact, Sharif's emissary, Niaz Naik, came to New Delhi on June 26; so did Gibson Lanpher, the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, after talks in Islamabad. In fact the quotation was from an article by a respected columnist, Nasim Zehra. Five days earlier The Guardian (of the United Kingdom) had published a report from Islamabad by a correspondent of repute, Suzanne Goldenberg: "India and Pakistan arrived at a secret deal to end the fighting in Kargil three weeks before their generals met (on July 11) to put peace in motion - a delay that cost hundreds of lives." Mushahid Hussain, Pakistan's Information Minister, told her that "by the 19th or 20th, there were the makings of some sort of understanding".

It was arrived at in the 'back-channel' parleys of Niaz A. Naik, former Foreign Secretary and High Commissioner to India, and R. K. Mishra of The Observer of Business and Politics, with Vivek Katju, Joint Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs, t o aid him.

In order to appreciate the significance of these reports, it is necessary to recall the background (vide the writer's article, "Kargil diplomacy", Frontline, August 13). Both countries were parleying with the U.S. also while their 'back channel' w as at work, and Nasim Zehra's and Suzanne Goldenberg's accounts vary on minor points. Nasim Zehra reports: "The 'back channel' collapsed in the last days of June when the identity of the secret negotiators was leaked to the Indian press." She alleges th at it was New Delhi that inspired the disclosure by the Press Trust of India (PTI) from Islamabad.

PTI revealed Naik's trip to India under an Islamabad, June 27, dateline: "Stung by the U.S. pressure to pull out of Kargil, the Nawaz Sharif Government has despatched former Foreign Secretary Niaz Naik as its special emissary to India on a mission with a set of new proposals... The mission, which the authorities wanted to keep secret, was leaked by elements in the establishment opposed to the U.S. pressure." Thus PTI attributed the leak to Pakistani sources. But it strains ones credulity that Pakistani sources would have recklessly compromised themselves by leaking to an Indian news agency when they could very well have used the Pakistani media for the same result.

On June 29, Pakistan confirmed the Naik visit but added that R. K. Mishra had been to Islamabad and met Nawaz Sharif and Foreign Secretary Shamshad Ahmed on June 18.

Niaz Naik's authoritative disclosure to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on June 29 removes all doubt. Even after the cover was blown, he was upbeat. "I think the situation will be resolved... We are trying to arrange the first meeting of what we call the Directors of Military Operations. The Prime Minister is up in China, he's coming back tomorrow (June 30) evening. I think things will start moving once he comes back to Islamabad." Nawaz Sharif cut short his trip to China on June 28 even as V ajpayee rushed back to Delhi on June 25 to meet Lanpher and Niaz Naik.

According to Nasim Zehra, around midday on June 27, Niaz Naik returned from New Delhi "with what was a finalised plan of action".

Both Brajesh Mishra and R. K. Mishra were present when Naik met Vajpayee earlier that day.

Nasim Zehra added: "Agreement was reached on four points: appropriate steps to be taken by both sides to mutually respect the LoC determined under the Simla Agreement of 1972; immediate resumption of the composite dialogue initiated under the Lahore proc ess; Islamabad to use its influence on the Mujahideen to request them to disengage; find an expeditious solution to the Kashmir dispute within a specified time-frame. It was also agreed that following the agreement, Pak-India dialogue would resume involv ing the Foreign Ministers. For immediate military de-escalation, the Directors-General Military Operations of the two countries were to hold a meeting.

"The agreement on the text was evolved during the five R. K. Mishra's Pakistan trips (sic). Mishra would carry back and forth amendments in a draft form in which amendments were made based on input from both sides. As a special envoy of the Indian Prime Minister, the businessman R. K. Mishra met with the Pakistani Prime Minister during all his trips to Pakistan."

R. K. Mishra had visited Pakistan five times since June 1. Nasim Zehra adds: "The Americans were completely kept out of back-channel negotiations. Washington did not even know that any such negotiations were taking place until around late June, a senior Cabinet Minister in passing mentioned to the American Ambassador in Pakistan that contacts with Delhi had been established through a back channel."

SHANKER CHAKRAVARTY
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, with Nawaz Sharif standing by, shakes hands with Niaz Naik at the Wagah border in February 1999.

On June 27, around 5 p.m., the text of the proposed "goodwill message" from Sharif was faxed from Islamabad to New Delhi. Nasim Zehra wrote: "The return message was coming in later than expected. The Indians were requested to fax the message at the Prime Minister's Model Town residence. The message came at around 10 p.m. And like a bombshell, Vajpayee was not inviting Nawaz Sharif to visit Delhi. Instead he was asking to "withdraw" the intruders from Kargil so that bilateral dialogue could be resumed. T elephone contacts with the Indians at the highest level did not help. India's principal interlocutor blamed Delhi's going back on a 'done deal' first on some misunderstanding on what had been agreed but subsequently conceded that the hawks in the Indian establishment had won out. There was a sudden panic amongst those who were the principal actors of Pakistan's back-channel diplomacy. The trip to China had still to go ahead. However, a decision was taken to cut it short."

News of Niaz Naik's secret trip was leaked to the Islamabad-based correspondent of PTI by Indian hawks opposed to the deal, Nasim Zehra alleges. On some points, however, she skates on thin ice. The pro-Indian stand of the G-8 and the U.S. could not have contributed to the failure: nor Lanpher's trip to New Delhi as she suspects. There was at least one element in the deal which could have spelt its doom. That Vajpayee promised Niaz Naik that he would discuss Kashmir once Pakistan withdrew from Kargil is clear. The Lahore process would be "accelerated", Naik reported. "He twice used the word accelerated." But which Indian Prime Minister could or would possibly agree to "find an expeditious solution to the Kashmir dispute within a specified time-frame?"

The ground situation was tricky for both. Pakistan knew it would have to quit. India, while being confident of success, knew the price it would have to pay. On June 30, L. K. Advani talked of success only by September. Tiger Hill was retaken on July 4, t he day Sharif met President Bill Clinton. The DGMOs wrapped up the deal concluded there only on July 11.

Bar that bit on a time-frame, the rest of the four points were unexceptionable. The time-frame stipulation could have been dropped on India's insistence, for it was an altogether new element. The deal would have survived, and its effect on the climate of opinion in both countries would have been dramatically sobering. Had the deal gone through on June 27, the result would have been vastly better than the one that came after July 11. Bilateralism would have received a powerful boost. Evidently, some peop le in New Delhi wanted to flourish a military victory for electoral ends, in preference to a diplomatic solution. Obviously the people who leaked Naik's visit to PTI on June 27 hoped to wreck the deal. Significantly, the leak was to the Indian, not Pakis tani, press. His interview to the BBC on June 29 shows that it was still possible to salvage the deal. Pakistan has revealed the details of the negotiations with dates and the time. The Vajpayee government's silence is deafening - and eloquent.

Having refused to summon the Rajya Sabha, the least the government can do is to publish a White Paper on the diplomatic record, especially on the aborted deal of June 27.

Vajpayee was very much a party to that deal not only telephonically, as mentioned in this writer's earlier article, but also by fax. The Clinton-Sharif draft was faxed to him, and he returned it with his approval, adding the word 'sanctity' (in respect o f the Line of Control) written in his own hand. The detail none could have invented and risked exposure (Amit Baruah, The Hindu, August 19). Vajpayee owes an explanation to the nation, and that duty is not discharged by bland denials such as the o ne by the official spokesman of the Ministry of External Affairs on August 19. It is too preposterous for words.