NEW DELHI, Dec 6: Pakistan urged Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on Thursday to plan a meeting with President Pervez Musharraf in Kathmandu next month and ignore a welter of hawkish ideas coming out of New Delhi which seek a complete suspension of talks on Kashmir.
Describing the hawkish suggestions as intemperate and pointlessly arrogant, Pakistan’s High Commissioner in India Ashraf Jehangir Qazi said in a rare public rejoinder to a clutch of hardline opinions that opposing a discussion on Kashmir between the two countries would only prolong the agony for both sides in all its manifestations.
“There are admittedly many in my country who take a similar attitude towards relations with India,” Qazi wrote in the Times of India. “But President Pervez Musharraf is certainly not one of them. He seeks a normalization of relations with India on the basis of a principled resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute that has stood in the way of this objective for so long.
“He recognizes that at present the positions of India and Pakistan on this issue are almost mutually exclusive and that it will take a considerable time to narrow differences sufficiently for visible progress towards a principled and mutually acceptable settlement to become possible. He does not say, as many are led to believe in India, that Kashmir is the only issue between the two countries. He does, however, say it is the most important issue and many Indians agree with him while observing that it is nonetheless an issue on which we disagree. He is prepared simultaneously to discuss any other issue that India may wish to raise and to address any concern that it may express on the assumption that it will be similarly prepared to address and move on issues of concern to Pakistan.
Qazi’s article mainly targeted K. Subrahmanyam, a senior member of India’s official thinktank and regarded as a hawk. Subrahmanyam wrote in the Times of India on Monday that India should put the Kashmir issue on ice and urged Vajpayee to only discuss with Gen Musharraf Islamabad’s plans to become a moderate Islamic state. Qazi was particularly incensed by Subrahmanyam’s claim that “terrorism” in Afghanistan and Kashmir were only training exercizes to launch terrorism against the US and Europe.
“The short-sighted arrogance and intemperance that characterize this approach is disappointing,” he argued. “Moreover, it is anything but likely, as some here fervently hope, that the international community will agree that President Musharraf’s insistence on an end to the repression of the Kashmiri people and on phased progress towards a mutually agreed and principled resolution of Jammu and Kashmir is equivalent to a “training exercize for terrorism against the US and Europe.”
Subrahmanyam’s article was “an expression of the traditional zero-sum Indian approach towards relations with Pakistan and resolving issues, particularly the Kashmir issue,” Qazi said. “This approach is essentially to say to Pakistan: Acknowledge that your position and policies are wrong and have no chance of success, adjust them to our satisfaction irrespective of what you may think the rights and wrongs of the situation are. It says forget the central issue of Jammu and Kashmir that has strained our relations for so long since we will never change our position and our overwhelming size ensures that neither you nor the people of Kashmir can do anything about it. And on this ‘I win, you lose’ basis we can move towards normalizing relations.”
He said this attitude takes no account of the point of view of Pakistan, dismisses the wishes of the majority of the people of Kashmir and ignores the ethical, legal and political facts of the situation. “It does not contribute to India’s standing as a country dedicated to democratic principles which after all are first and foremost premised on a respect for the wishes of the majority of the people concerned. It has ensured the continuation of the Kashmir dispute as a running sore in India-Pakistan relations, brought untold misery to the people of Jammu and Kashmir and blighted the prospect of both countries realising their very considerable human development and quality of life potential. If continued, this approach will pour cold water on our shared and achievable aspiration to make South Asia a 21st century success story.”
This is the essence of a non zero-sum or positive-sum approach which sees a resolution of issues in a win-win rather than win-lose perspective, Qazi said. “The history of India-Pakistan relations is testimony that this is the only approach that can work. Accordingly, analysts here are wrong when they say Sept 11 has buried whatever happened at Agra. Although the Agra summit did not result in an Agra declaration, it did result in understandings which may not have obligatory status but nonetheless are part of the record and can provide useful building blocks and guidelines for future interactions at several levels.
“India talks about cross-border terrorism. We talk about state terrorism in Indian-occupied Kashmir which is given the cover of black laws one example of which is currently a subject of some domestic controversy,” the envoy said. “These are issues on which we obviously disagree. But we have a choice. Either we enter into a process of interaction and negotiations in which it may eventually become possible to address and resolve issues on which we currently differ very substantially. Or we can trade allegations and seek to beset each other in argument, diplomacy and conflict.
“It is a pity that seminal opportunities that may be emerging in the post-September 11 world for moving the India-Pakistan relationship forward are wantonly ignored in favour of tired old zero-sum games that have led and can lead nowhere,” Qazi wrote. “Fortunately, President Musharraf does not share this mindset. We must all hope that this poverty of imagination is not widely shared in India. Fortunately, again, Prime Minister Vajpayee’s suggestion that he may meet President Musharraf in Kathmandu is indicative of the likelihood that it is not.”
