PUBLIC opinion in both India and Pakistan is apparently relieved that the process of composite dialogue between their governments continues. Still, it is not possible to conceal one’s disappointment that the latest round of ministerial talks in Islamabad could not register progress towards bridging the divide between the two neighbours.

True, India needs to know the new government in Pakistan better to receive more evidence of its stability before committing itself to substantial measures needed to normalise bilateral relations. However, when allowances have been made for the lack of familiarity with their counterparts, the Indians could have made their latest visit to Islamabad more meaningful by at least moving towards a more sensible and humane visa regime.

This is not to belittle the importance of the new accord on facilitating consular access to Indian and Pakistani nationals in each other’s prisons. This issue has always caused bitterness between the two countries. Some recent incidents, such as the death of two Pakistan nationals in Indian prisons, greatly aggravated tensions and emboldened the traditional enemies of peace in the subcontinent to call for an end to all confidence-building measures. Even otherwise, the inhuman treatment the two countries reserve for each other’s prisoners is one of the most reprehensible consequences of their failure to live like civilised neighbours.

Under the new accord, each government will maintain a comprehensive list of the nationals of the other country under its arrest, detention and imprisonment and the lists will be exchanged every six months. Each case of arrest, detention and imprisonment of any person from the other country will be intimated to the mission concerned. Likewise, each government will inform the other of the sentence awarded to the convicted nationals of the other country. Consular access is guaranteed within three months of notice and prisoners will be repatriated to home countries within one month of confirmation of their national status and completion of sentences.

While the accord is welcome as far as it goes, unfortunately, it does not go far enough. For instance, in special cases, which call for or require compassionate or humanitarian considerations, each side may exercise its discretion, subject to its laws and regulations, to allow the early release and repatriation of persons.

Quite obviously, the urge to be compassionate towards detainees who are on their deathbed or in the terminal phase of sickness has been sacrificed at the altar of the security agencies’ paranoia. If the two countries can appreciate the need for cross-border humanism replacing cross-border conflict, they should establish a mechanism for the immediate repatriation of detainees who are too sick or infirm to cause any harm to anyone. This will mark the beginning of a journey towards the ideal of an accord in future whereby Indians and Pakistanis convicted in the other country may be allowed to serve their sentences in the home country.

The unnecessarily great respect New Delhi and Islamabad pay to spoilsports in their security agencies is evident from the provision in the accord, in cases of arrest, detention or sentence, made on political or security grounds. Each side may examine any such case on its merit. This keeps the door open to security personnel’s veto in cases they may label as ‘political’ or ‘security’ matters. And one knows at what low level such matters are decided. One should like to hope that, sooner rather than later, such cases are brought under the purview of joint prisoners’ welfare committees.

It is not known whether during the negotiations preceding this accord the question of Indian and Pakistani convicts being executed in the other country was discussed. Considering the recent agitation in both countries over the possible execution of Sarabjit Singh, it should have been. A possible way out of this emotive problem could be a joint India-Pakistan declaration to abolish the death penalty in their countries. If Saarc could be wise enough to reach a regional accord on this subject, that would be even better.

The two countries’ regrettable surrender to their security apparatuses visible in the accord on prisoners is more evident in the apparent tightening of visa restrictions on both sides. Indian journalists have been prevented from attending a media training course in Lahore. Some Indian artistes who had been invited to perform in Lahore in a festival were allowed visas by the Pakistan High Commission but were unable to come because the Indian authorities did not allow them to cross the Wagah border on foot. Pakistanis desiring to visit their relations in India are now required to furnish new guarantees of return. Peace activists wishing to attend a joint convention of the Pakistan-India People’s Forum have been kept waiting for clearance by the Islamabad bureaucrats for months.

That free travel between India and Pakistan will be the most decisive confidence-building measure can hardly be disputed. But it seems political leaders on both sides are helpless in the face of obdurate bureaucrats who cannot discard the script of confrontation they have followed for decades. One of their myths is that a new India-Pakistan summit should wait till the officials have worked on something for a happy announcement. Perhaps it is time to reverse the process and move towards a meeting between the two prime ministers and give them a chance to create an environment in which all outstanding issues can be addressed. If Mr Asif Zardari really wishes to visit Delhi in Mr Nawaz Sharif’s company the sooner this happen the better. That could help.

The traditional view that disputes and differences have erased all goodwill between India and Pakistan and prevented them from cooperating with one another is becoming increasingly untenable. Far more plausible is the view that the absence of goodwill has not only prevented these subcontinental twins from approaching disputes and differences as matters that can be resolved but has also contributed to ideologisation of political matters and thus made them intractable.

It is therefore time that reliance on experts in dispute resolution was reduced and greater confidence reposed in political agents who can cleanse the people’s psyche of rancour and prejudice foolishly nourished for decades. They may be able to save the process of composite dialogue from degenerating into a tour-and-travel ritual.

IT is difficult to quantify the colossal cost to Pakistan of its policy of confrontation with India. If this policy is not modified future generations will be held hostage to a crippling imbroglio that will take a heavy toll for years to come.

Had we created durable democratic institutions in the country and established an egalitarian system of governance based on the rule of law and principles of social justice, there would have been an incentive for the people of Kashmir to look towards Pakistan for ideological inspiration. Sadly, that has not been so.

A country that has had such a dismal human rights record and which has been under military rule for long periods hardly has the high moral ground to advocate the cause of freedom and autonomy for the people of the Kashmir Valley.

From a practical standpoint, Pakistan does not have the resources or the military wherewithal to confront India and impose a settlement. The history of the last six decades is proof of this objective reality. Will Pakistan continue to pay a heavy price in terms of defence preparedness and weaponry to deal with the perceived threat from its eastern neighbour? Will Pakistan continue to brace itself for the consequences that flow from its stand on Kashmir? Is it in Pakistan’s short-term or long-term interest to risk its economic development and ignore the welfare of its people by continuing to spend billions annually on defence?

The cost of conflict is not only in terms of the scarce resources being allocated for defence at the cost of the social sectors. It goes far beyond the huge defence spending. Because of the continuing standoff, the military has assumed a far greater role in Pakistan’s domestic politics.

Many in the military would not want to have anything to do with the internal political process in the country. But such is the size and influence of the military that it inevitably gets dragged into the political arena at all crucial junctures in the nation’s history.

That has been Pakistan’s tragic dilemma. In other words, continued confrontation with India has resulted in lack of progress on institution-building. It has created an environment in which democracy has been derailed time and again with impunity. Democracy is, therefore, a major casualty of our Kashmir policy.

Equally important are the serious implications of our Kashmir policy for Indian Muslims. India is a country of 180m Muslims. Their destiny is compromised and their interests jeopardised because of hostility between the two neighbours on account of Kashmir. The conflict has caused untold misery and suffering to the people of the Valley itself. Thousands have been killed, countless tortured and many have disappeared, perhaps for good.

Some soul-searching, some reappraisal is long overdue. The resistance to Indian rule has caused widespread loss to the area and its people. The reality, however, is that India will never allow a fragmentation of the territory it governs. Other options are available to ease the pressure on the people of Kashmir.

After all, India is also deeply conscious of its evolving role as a world power. It is attempting to win a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. It would, therefore, like to project its image as that of a great power which acts with maturity and accommodation towards its neighbours.

There are compulsions on both sides. The cost of conflict for Pakistan is obviously many times higher than it is for India. We have kept 165m people hostage, in terms of economic progress and social well-being, to our India-centric policy for six decades. One generation after another has passed on this baggage of adventurism to its progeny. Will this ever stop?

The solution must accommodate the varying factors that impinge on the issue, namely, the cost of conflict to Pakistan, aspirations of the people of Kashmir, the ground realities, the urge for peace, geopolitical compulsions and the promise of a better future and a more stable region.

Parties to the conflict must, therefore, seriously explore an arrangement in which Jammu and Kashmir would be granted a special status, envisaging complete internal autonomy within the Indian union. This would roughly translate into a status, for instance, like Hong Kong and Macao vis-à-vis China. In other words, it will imply one country, two systems and would bind Jammu and Kashmir to the Indian union only in defence, currency and foreign relations but leave the state free to administer itself and enter into foreign trade relations with other countries.

The concept encompasses all the legitimate concerns of all parties and mainly those of the people of Jammu and Kashmir. Events are overtaking us. Barriers are collapsing the world over. The European Union and Asean are living proof of this. Any peace mechanism that is adopted would have as its goal the ushering of democracy in Pakistan, easing the problems of millions of Indian Muslims and bringing peace to the long-suffering people of the Valley.

The teeming millions of the subcontinent, the 350m Muslims included, deserve better. The bitter truth is that ordinary people in Pakistan want to come out of the vicious cycle of poverty, to be able to access better health services, clean water, quality education, a stable power supply, peace, justice, provincial autonomy, job opportunities and generally improved livelihoods. They have no involvement in the liberation struggle the precise meaning of which they have not been able to understand.

A policy towards India in the context of our stand on Kashmir, having such enormous and profound implications, must have the overwhelming approval and support of the real stakeholders i.e. the people of Pakistan. Sadly, the present policy does not take this fundamental reality into account. This has to change if the destiny of one-fifth of humanity and more specifically the lives of the downtrodden people of Pakistan and Kashmir are to improve.

AMID the continuing brouhaha about issues of race and gender in the US presidential campaign, we may be in danger of losing sight of the most important question that has arisen in the candidates’ skirmishing over international affairs.

That relates to John McCain’s advocacy of the establishment of a “league of democracies”, and the mounting clamour for Barack Obama to espouse the same idea as his own.

McCain says he’d establish the league in his first year in office: a close-knit grouping of like-minded nations that could respond to humanitarian crises and compensate for the UN Security Council’s tendency to be hamstrung by the likes of Russia and China when it needs to take decisive action against the world’s evil-doers. Neocon guru Robert Kagan, an avid proponent, says that the league’s strength would be that it “would not be limited to Europeans and Americans but would include the world’s other great democracies, such as India, Brazil, Japan and Australia, and would [therefore] have even greater legitimacy”.

The idea has also been embraced by many Obama supporters, notably Ivo Daalder, a foreign policy adviser to the Illinois senator, and Anthony Lake, his senior international affairs adviser. “Crises in Iran, North Korea, Iraq and Darfur,” Lake writes, “not to mention the pressing need for more efficient peacekeeping operations, the rising temperatures of our seas and multiple other transnational threats, demonstrate not only the limits of American unilateral power but also the inability of international institutions designed in the middle of the 20th century to cope with the problems of the 21st.”

The world has just, less than two decades ago, come out of a crippling cold war. We are moving fitfully to a world without boundaries, one in which America’s biggest potential geopolitical rival, China, is also its biggest trading partner. If we were to create a new league of democracies, who would we leave out? China and Russia — a former superpower and a future one, two countries without whom a world of peace and prosperity is unimaginable. Instead of encouraging their gradual democratisation, wouldn’t we be reinforcing their sense of rejection by the rest? Might the result be the self-fulfilling prophecy of the emergence of a league of autocracies with these two at the helm?

Many democracies have other affinities that are as important to them. India, for instance, may count solidarity with other former colonies, or with other developing countries, as more important than its affiliation with a league of democracies; Southeast Asian democracies might prefer their regional alliance with autocracies in Asean. The American notion that a collection of democracies would inevitably be an echo-chamber for an American diagnosis of global problems is a fantasy.

Had a league of democracies existed during the apartheid years, would Washington have been persuaded by a democratic majority to intervene against Pretoria? The very question points to the risibility of its premise. The advocates of a league of democracies argue that it would intervene more effectively in cases like Darfur or the cruel indifference of the military regime in Burma to the sufferings of its cyclone victims. That is a delusion. Such interventions have not occurred because they are impracticable.

Humanitarian aid could not have been delivered effectively in the Irrawaddy delta in the teeth of active resistance by the Burmese junta, or in Darfur by going to war with the Sudanese army, unless the countries wishing to do this were to be prepared to expend a level of blood and treasure that democracies rarely risk for strangers.

The reason that decisions of the UN enjoy legitimacy across the world lies not in the democratic virtue of its members, but in its universality.

This is the time to renovate and strengthen the UN, not to bypass it. As the post-cold war “unipolar moment” slowly but surely makes way for a world of multiple power centres and a rising new superpower, there has never been a greater need for a system of universally applicable rules and laws that will hold all countries together in a shared international community. We all hope that, in an era of instant communications and worldwide information flows, this community will be an increasingly democratic one. Subtracting today’s democracies from it will have the opposite effect.

— The Guardian, London

The writer is a former UN under-secretary general.