AFTER a fortnight of intense and wearing negotiations in the Chinese capital, the North Korean nuclear talks were broken off on August 7 for a three-week recess, with no sight of progress over Pyongyang’s demand for peaceful nuclear capabilities.

North Korea’s chief delegate, Kim Kye-gwan, argued it was the right of every country to use nuclear power for peaceful purposes and put the onus on the United States to back down if it wanted to see progress in the talks. The US contended that North Korea could not keep its nuclear power plants because the nation had a history of turning civilian atomic reactors to weapons factories. The US state department had previously voiced concern that any atomic programme could be turned into a nuclear weapons project and Washington, therefore, wanted to see a complete dismantling of all North Korea’s nuclear facilities.

According to the Japanese envoy at the talks, North Korea must first build trust by joining the NPT before expecting any agreement on nuclear programmes for civilian use.

The fourth round of the six-nation talks, including the US, North Korea, South Korea, China, Russia and Japan, which began in Beijing on July 26 and ended on August 7, had several distinguishing features. The North Koreans agreed to come back to the negotiating table after a 13-month hiatus. Unlike the three previous rounds of talks, each of which lasted three days, the fourth session had no fixed end date and continued for 13 days. For the first time, the US showed flexibility with respect to North Korea’s long-standing demand for bilateral talks and the two held as many as eight one-on-one meetings in an attempt to resolve their differences. Also for the first time, both the US and North Korea were willing to seriously explore the possibility of a deal to end the nuclear standoff.

The most positive development with respect to the US-North Korean standoff was the decision of the Bush administration to give up the option of “regime change” in Pyongyang. The first indication was given by President Bush himself who, in his state of the union address in February this year, did not repeat his 2002 characterization of North Korea as part of an “axis of evil”. The president also seemed to indicate that, unlike Iran where he urged the Iranian people to overthrow their government, the US would not seek to precipitate or opt for a regime change in North Korea.

In June this year, showing more respect for North Korea’s sovereignty and its leader, President Bush even started referring to Kim Jong-il as “Mr Kim” — a sea-change from the past year when the North Korean leader was described as “a tyrant” and “a dangerous person” who “starves” his own people and “has huge concentration camps”.

The most difficult, and yet the most relevant, issue at the Korean nuclear talks has been: is the North Korean leader prepared to dismantle his nuclear weapons programmes and give up as many as eight bombs that the US intelligence agencies believe he may already have produced, in exchange for assurances that Washington will not try to oust him from power?

The recently held fourth round of talks took place against the backdrop of a lot of sabre-rattling by North Korea and the US. When on February 10 this year, North Korea declared that it had developed nuclear weapons to defend itself from the United States and the US intelligence reportedly found evidence of an impending nuclear test, the Pentagon dispatched 15 F-117 stealth war-planes to South Korea.

The move was seen as a deliberate show of force to impress Seoul, Beijing and Pyongyang with Washington’s impatience and determination. At the same time, however, the US also made it clear that it was prepared to be more flexible at the negotiating table — specifically with respect to North Korea’s longstanding demand for bilateral talks — than in the past.

After refusing to participate in any talks over its nuclear programme for more than 13 months, North Korea finally came to the negotiating table and listed its conditions for scrapping its nuclear programme during the recently concluded talks. Though North Korea’s delegate, Kim Kye-gwan, confirmed that his country’s aim was “denuclearization” of the Korean peninsula, he refused to accept America’s version of what nuclear projects were under way in North Korea. He particularly refused to accept that his country was making highly enriched uranium, which could be turned into nuclear weapons. He only admitted to a plutonium-based bomb-making project.

It may be observed that it was only after South Korea had offered its northern neighbour a new and unconditional food-aid package and huge electricity supplies if it dismantled its nuclear weapons that North Korea agreed to return to the negotiation table. In return for scrapping its nuclear projects, North Korea asked the Americans for nuclear concessions. As a country that had declared itself a nuclear power, North Korea wanted to be treated like one.

The key sticking point on which an agreement could not be reached after 13 days of intense, some time late-night, negotiations, is the same that has led to the Iranian nuclear crisis: both North Korea and Iran insist that it is the right of every country to use nuclear power for peaceful purposes. Ironically, the recently concluded Indo-US nuclear deal may prompt China and Russia, both members of the nuclear suppliers group (NSG) to resume supplies to their allies and friends. Any dissension in the NSG will be counterproductive to US efforts to disarm North Korea and restrain Iran. This may be the first fallout of Indo-US nuclear accord.

The talks have also struggled to overcome another hurdle: in exchange for dismantling its nuclear facilities, the North has also demanded normalization of ties with the United States, as well as economic assistance and security guarantees. North Korea has balked at demands it disarm before it receives aid promised by the US and other governments participating in the nuclear talks.

With a population of 22 million, North Korea has largely depended on outside help since the 1990s when more than a million people may have died from a famine because of years of flooding, drought and economic mismanagement. Recently the UN has warned that North Korea is on the brink of another famine with one in three people malnourished and many forced to scavenge for grass and seaweed.

The second hurdle in the way of finding a solution to the nuclear standoff between the United States and North Korea relates to the argument whether North Korea should dismantle its weapons before receiving aid and security guarantees, as the US has demanded, or whether it obtains the incentives first, which North Korea wants.

The American offer to North Korea was much the same as the one made at the last round of talks in June 2004. Under it, North Korea was to be given three months in which to freeze its nuclear facilities during which it would start receiving oil aid. Thereafter, it would be expected to dismantle swiftly its nuclear programmes under the supervision of IAEA inspectors. As this progressed, the Americans would move towards lifting economic sanctions and removing North Korea from their list of terrorist states. But the North Koreans argued that this arrangement would require them to make concessions before they could reap any rewards and that was not acceptable to them.

Though the North Korean nuclear talks have not so far achieved the desired result, a solid groundwork has been laid for serious negotiations to resolve the remaining two issues when the six-nation talks will begin early next month after the recess. The mere fact that the just concluded negotiations lasted much longer than any of the previous efforts shows all the parties are interested in reaching an agreement. If the North Korean nuclear issue is resolved peacefully, it will have a positive impact on the Iranian nuclear standoff which has the potential to spark an international crisis.

The writer is a former ambassador.

THE eighties were the worst of times in India’s Punjab. The Bhindrawale cult of violence, Operation Bluestar inside the Golden Temple at Amritsar, the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and the killing of 3,000 Sikhs in Delhi in broad daylight happened in a span of five years. They took their toll on peace and equanimity. The state looked nearly beyond repair.

But when the terrorists began to target the Sikhs, the tide turned. People extended their hand to the police to fight the terrorists. Punjab is now among the most peaceful states in the country. The Congress has apologized for Operation Bluestar. Mrs Gandhi’s assassins have met the ends of justice. Yet, the suspicion who killed 3,000 Sikhs in 1984 has been lurking in the minds of Punjabis, particularly the Sikhs.

In the past 21 years, the different governments at the centre have appointed different commissions — so far nine — to find out who was guilty. No one has come up with the correct answer although some have been harsh on the administration. The ninth, the Justice Nanavati Commission, whose report was tabled in parliament this week, too, has not done a thorough job. It has failed to name the real persons who were behind the carnage. Jagdish Tytler’s resignation from the union cabinet has lessened a bit of pressure on the Congress party which was in power in 1984. But he is not the real culprit. He, like Sajjan Kumar and Dharm Shastri, named by the Nanavati report, may at best have been communicators. The real face or faces are yet to be detected. Who are they?

Yet, Nanavati has found enough evidence to tell the nation some home truths: One, local Congress leaders had either incited or helped the mobs in attacking the Sikhs; two, the systematic manner in which the Sikhs were killed indicated that the attacks on them were organized; three, lack of fear of the police force was also one of the causes for the happening of so many incidents within three or four days. The army was late to arrive to quell the disturbances.

Nanavati does not agree with the Congress plea that the killing of Mrs Gandhi by her two Sikh guards evoked “a spontaneous reaction of the angry public”. He says there is evidence to show that male members of the Sikh community were taken out of their houses. “They were beaten first and then burnt alive in a systematic manner. In some cases, tyres were put around their necks and then they were set on fire by pouring kerosene or petrol over them. In some cases white inflammable powder was thrown on them which immediately caught fire thereafter.”

The shops belonging to Sikhs were identified, looted and then burnt. There was evidence, according to Nanavati, that at some places the mobs indulging in violent attacks had come in Delhi Transport Corporation buses. “They came armed with weapons.” Nanavati points out that if the police had taken prompt and effective steps, “very probably so many lives would not have been lost and so many properties would not have been looted, destroyed or burnt.”

I do not know why the government took six months to consider the report. Even then, there is not a word of regret, remorse, much less a promise of introspection. All that the government report says is that “it has decided to advise the state governments, Union Territories and Delhi public to take necessary action accordingly.” This bureaucratic jargon does not mean anything, at least nothing to the families of victims who are far from rehabilitated.

I talked to Nanavati after he had submitted the report. I found him shaken by the instances of planned and deliberate rioting. Nanavati threw up his hands in despair when I asked him if the administration had learnt any lesson. He said: anything can happen anywhere at any time in the country because politicians have no value system to follow and the police have no limits in behaviour or action. His condemnation of politicians was, indeed, scathing.

Yet one positive thing which Nanavati noticed was that although everyone in the riot-hit area had lost someone or the other there were instances where those left behind could feel that what happened need not have happened. Probably, this is the thread that we can pick up to sew the lives, which lie asunder and help heal the wounds that are still agape.

When I initiated in the Rajya Sabha a proposal for the appointment of a commission, I had in mind something on the lines of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission appointed in South Africa to know frankly, without the fear of punishment, why the white harassed, hounded and even killed the black during the apartheid regime. I wanted some Congress members or some officials to come forward and tell the truth. Who were the people who organized the killings and systematically picked up Sikhs even in the most elite localities. I knew that after 21 years there would not be much of evidence left to punish the guilty. But we might have come to know the truth. It would have served as a catharsis of sorts.

Instead, I find a slugging match between P.C.Alexander, then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s secretary and P.G.Gavai, who was the Lieutenant governor of Delhi at the time of riots. Alexander cannot shirk his responsibility because he was the PM’s secretary and incharge of the administration because Rajiv Gandhi was too engrossed in his grief over the assassination of his mother. Alexander cannot run away from the responsibility of delayed action against the mobs.

Gavai has said from Nagpur where he is living after his retirement: “I was fighting my own battle then. None were interested in containing the riots. I was just called for meeting after meeting but received no help as far as containing the riots were concerned. Even the army help came a day late, when most things were already under control. Whatever damage had to happen, happened on the first day itself. When I asked then army chief General A.S.Vaidya why there was delay in sending troops, he said, ‘It takes time to organize troops’.”

I am disturbed to hear that the further investigations that Nanavati has proposed will be given to the same old investigating agencies. They failed in the past. Nanavati has said so in his report. Entrusting probes to them will be a deliberate act not to pursue things seriously. The ruling party is probably afraid that more Congress members and their loyal officers may be exposed.

Some truth may come to light if further investigations are entrusted to the National Human Rights Commission. It does not have a large machinery for probe. But it has a small but honest and dedicated team of investigators. They may be able to ferret out the facts, which are lost or hidden at present among a lot of things.

WRITING in these columns on March 30, 2003 on the Iraq war, I had said: “It is a strange war. The victor is destined to be the loser; the defeated are likely to bask in the halo of victory. How do we explain this paradox? The Iraq war was unleashed on the premise that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD). But what if these alleged weapons are never used or discovered by the Anglo-American invaders? What if Saddam’s secret weapon is urban guerilla fighting? It makes good strategy from his point of view to hit the enemy’s Achilles’ heel.”

Sadly, the above prediction is not far off the mark. We now learn from a number of authentic sources including the Downing Street cabinet leak, that President Bush was ‘gung-ho’ to wage war on Saddam within three months of 9/11.

The article concluded with the remarks: “If no WMD is found, Bush and Blair will some day — yes some day — be arraigned for waging war on presumptive or speculative grounds.”

It is unlikely that Bush and Blair will ever be tried in a formal court. But in the court of public opinion, they are held guilty of inflicting a needless war. But, instead of admitting a mistake and apologizing to the Iraqi nation and quitting Iraq, they have chosen to forget the cause of going to war in the first place. As an afterthought, a new war aim has been invented: Freedom for the hapless Iraqis. Freedom is supposed to arrive after the Americans slaughter the Iraqis and the Iraqis slaughter one another. Never mind North Korea with its proven WMDs and a dictatorship worse than Saddam’s, is being courted at six-party nuclear talks in with a heavy load of goodies in train.

In the meantime, the querulous framers of the Iraqi constitution are all agreed on one basic matter: liberal rights granted to women by Saddam Hussein be abstracted in the name of Shariat. An Iranian-style regime is promised to the women of Iraq. Three cheers for the liberation of Iraq!

An epistemological question arises: what is freedom? Apparently each culture has its own concept of freedom.

Pondering the consequences of war in Iraq and the US behaviour towards enemy combatants, it seems that they are determined to bring about a ‘clash of civilizations’. The exit of America from Iraq — whenever it takes place — is likely to be as traumatic as America’s exit from Vietnam. In this nasty war the last laugh may well belong to Iran. The allies of the US in Iraq are the Shias, who are united under the spiritual leadership of Ayatollah Sistani, who draws his temporal inspiration from the Islamic Republic of Iran — the current beta noire of the US. In effect the US is fighting Iran’s war in Iraq — or so it seems.

In the process of unleashing a thoughtless war and stirring a hornet’s nest, Mr Bush has altered the character and concept of America that we once knew. The United States was the cradle of democratic freedoms, the pillar of civil society and the champion of anti-colonialism. It was Roosevelt who more or less bullied Churchill into granting freedom to British India. Without Roosevelt’s prodding India and Pakistan in all likelihood would not have achieved independence in 1947. Take the Suez War. It was America’s reluctance to back the aggression of Britain and France which handed the sovereignty of the Suez Canal to Egypt.

Take Marshall Plan, which was responsible for the economic revival of Europe after World War-II. Perhaps the classic case of great power restraint was its patient engagement of the Soviet Union in the cold war period (1946-1990). The US exercised restraint when the Soviet tanks invaded Berlin, Warsaw, Budapest and Prague following the enlightened foreign policies of statesman like George Kennan. It provided the Soviets the incentive to moderate their behaviour.

Vietnam was the beginning of America’s misadventures in foreign lands, culminating in the Iraq war. Post-9/11 America has started redefining itself in an aggressive way. To quote again from my previous column: “And Mr Bush Jr. — the red neck of Texas — will be long remembered for fanning the so-called “civilizational conflict”, has introduced a new political category: democratic fascism. “

Not known previously were the atrocities perpetrated by the US on Arab and Afghan prisoners. An editorial of July 21, 2005, appearing in the International Herald Tribune under the heading ‘The Women of Guantanamo’ is revealing; yesterday’s champion of human rights has invented a unique form of cultural torture.

“.... Surely no one can approve turning an American soldier into a pseudo-lap-dancer or having another smear fake menstrual blood on an Arab man. These practices are as degrading to the women as they are to the prisoners. They violate American moral values — and they seem pointless.

“Does anyone in the military believe that a coldblooded terrorist who has withstood months of physical and psychological abuse will crack because a woman runs her fingers through his hair suggestively or watches him disrobe? If devout Muslims become terrorists because they believe western civilization is depraved, does it make sense to try to unnerve them by having western women behave like trollops?.... There were several instances when female soldiers rubbed up against prisoners and touched them inappropriately.... began to enter the personal space of the subject, touched him and whispered in his ear. “

What sort of a war is this, where one side has no country, no army, with hardly a communication system, no unified command and fights a war on a shoe string versus the other which is just the opposite in arms, power, communication and command systems and a virtually limitless budget? The US will spend millions of dollars to save the life of one American soldier: the other side has a thousand men desperately waiting to enter paradise.

We need to analyse trying to understand this strange phenomenon which seems to be the future of wars in the 21st century. It is certainly not jihad or a holy war pitting Muslims against non-Muslims. Islam expressly forbids the killing of Muslims or non-combatants of any faith. Jihad lays down strict parameters of conduct, it absolutely forbids suicide. None of these conditions are even remotely met by the warriors of this invisible army. Islam apparently is a smokescreen for something else — a means to an end and not an end itself.

Next some people think that given a withdrawal by the US and its allies from Iraq, Afghanistan and an equitable resolution of the Palestine conflict, this invisible war will come to an end. They may yet be mistaken. I quote here Oliver Roy, the distinguished French scholar of Islam and author of “Globalized Islam”: -

“First, let’s consider the chronology. The Americans went to Iraq and Afghanistan after September 11, not before. Mohammed Atta and the other pilots were not driven by Iraq or Afghanistan. Were they then driven by the plight of the Palestinians? It seems unlikely. After all, the attack was plotted well before the second intifada began in September 2000, at a time of relative optimism in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations....

“Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden’s mentor, gave up supporting the Palestinian Liberation Organization long before his death in 1989 because he felt that to fight for a localized political cause was to forsake the real jihad, which he felt should be international and religious in character.

“From the beginning, Al Qaeda’s fighters were global jihadists, and their favoured battlegrounds have been outside the Middle East: Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya and Kashmir. For them, every conflict is simply a part of the western encroachment on the Muslim ummah, the worldwide community of believers.

“Second, if the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine are at the core of the radicalization, why are there virtually no Afghans, Iraqis or Palestinians among the terrorists? Rather, the bombers are mostly from the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, Egypt and Pakistan — or they are Western-born converts to Islam.”

If Islam is just the flag of these invisible warriors and if the involvement of suicide warriors and their motives lies outside the current wars in Muslim lands, what then are the real objectives of the globalized war instigated by Osama bin Laden? To my mind, it is an audacious attempt at world domination. The only route to world domination lies in securing Saudi Arabia (Osama’s homeland) and its prolific reservoirs of black gold. To secure this objective is to pit the ummah from the jungles of Indonesia to the sands of Morocco against the west. The purpose is to consolidate the ummah and divide the West. Talibanism, Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq are merely side shows which serve as a useful launching pad.

In modern times, there have been historical actors with not only the vision but the will and the means to dominate the world. Such was the determination of Napoleon and Hitler. But a comparison of Osama bin Laden with them is inappropriate. The chosen means is not arms but ideology based on a religious cliff. A more appropriate comparison would be with Marx, no matter how absurd this may appear. Marx rose out of his 19th century grave to dominate with ideology China, Russia and very large parts of Europe and South America. Marxism was the religion of the world in much of the 20th century and gave birth to a fanaticism much like what we see today.

If we are to come to terms with Osama and this new global invisible war, we must know what his ultimate objectives are.

The writer is a member of the National Assembly. E-mail: murbr@isb.paknet.com.pk