NEW DELHI, April 18: President Gen Pervez Musharraf counselled India’s senior editors on Monday to press New Delhi to work for a genuine resolution of the Kashmir dispute because brushing it under the carpet would only increase the chances of mutual bad blood coming back to haunt the region.
“If you brush issues under the carpet it doesn’t work,” Gen Musharraf said at a breakfast interaction with the Indian Editors’ Guild. “In our own environment it hasn’t worked. We reached the Tashkent Accord, Shimla Agreement, Lahore Declaration and all those things. But still the tension remained, still we were angry at each other, still there was acrimony between the two countries –- because we didn’t resolve the issues, we didn’t go to the core of the issues.”
Gen Musharraf praised Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as a sincere person with whom he liked to work. But he said the present leadership in both countries will not last forever. “The time has never been so ripe to work for a good solution to Kashmir,” he stated before issuing a veiled warning: “Nobody is permanent in the world. Permanent is India and Pakistan. Therefore, when the time changes -– and we should reflect forward, say five to 10 years from now — the environment may be different, the leadership may be different, and, therefore, the same issues which we are discussing with harmony, if they are not resolved they will erupt again. There’s no guarantee of permanence of solutions without having resolved the dispute.”
Gen Musharraf said he wanted to underscore the importance of the assertion with all his strength.
“Unless we resolve the dispute it can erupt again in the future, under a different environment, under a different leadership. This is a very important point which I would like to make with all my strength. And it is my conviction that we have to see things historically. In the past we had signed agreements. But agreements mean nothing in a different environment and for a different leadership.
“Therefore we must go for a resolution of all disputes and for the resolution of the core dispute of Kashmir. We have to resolve the dispute amicably to the acceptance of Pakistan, India and the people of Kashmir.”
He referred to a Hindi song used by the Indian media to characterize his visit. “No I haven’t come with the same old heart. In fact, I would say that I am here with a new heart,” he said referring to the visit in July 2001.
“At that time it was hatred, it was acrimony, we were angry at each other. We were killing each other. There was tension. Now there is harmony, we are talking peace. We are not angry, we are very happy.”
Compared to the main issue of Kashmir, other aspects of bilateral difficulties were mostly technical in nature. These include the Sir Creek and the Baglihar Dam issues. Siachen too was a technical issue that could be easily resolved, he said.
Asked whether Pakistan’s change of heart towards talks with India was spontaneous or was it driven by foreign pressures, Gen Musharraf pointed to a combination of factors that influenced the course.
“It is a combination of all. I think the world has changed very much after 9/11. The world has also changed when geo-economics and commerce were not issues in the past. It was geo-politics earlier. Now the world is focussed on economics. Nine/eleven has brought about a total shift in the realization of what I said — that conflict resolution (not conflict management) is required,” Gen Musharraf said.
He noted that terrorism had emerged as the main menace of the world and there was realization that conflict resolution had to be done.
There was also a realization “internationally and domestically” that military solutions were not an option anymore just as “coercive diplomacy” was not, he said.
