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No other American Ambassador to India has been so voluble in public
about what this country should and should not do to promote
regional peace and stability as Frank G Wisner. The impression is
irresistible that he tends to get carried away by his own eloquence
while giving sermons on this subject. His speech at Jammu
University on February 18, especially his remarks on the Indian
Foreign Minister's stress on the importance of improving relations
with neighbours, is a case in point. It has annoyed I K Gujral
obviously because the US envoy went well beyond the norms supposed
to be observed by ambassadors. He may have committed this
transgression unwittingly because he is in a hurry to share all his
noble thoughts on resolving the vexed Kashmir issue before the
expected end of his tenure soon.
A possible alternative explanation lies in his mention, in the
Jammu speech, of any misapprehension of "the imperatives of global
citizenship at the end of the 20th century." Well, whenever, if at
all, global citizenship turns into reality, the more important fact
today is that the world is still not without borders. And so long
as this is so, it would be wrong even for the mighty US or its
representatives in other countries to conduct themselves as if
nation-states have ceased to be. It is one thing to sing the glory
of peace and reconciliation but quite another to spell out detailed
measures for this purpose and ask the government of a sovereign
country to implement them. An exercise of this kind is all the
more regrettable because Frank G Wisner, like the hyperactive Robin
Raphel, never seems to tire of disavowing any American bid to
mediate in the Kashmir conflict. All the time, however, the duo
have gone about as if they have in fact been invested with this
specific responsibility.
Wisner's controversial speech (going by the text released by the
USIS) is notable for another reason. That is the omission of the
Shimla Agreement of 19 72 from his observations on Kashmir. He
knows as well as anyone else worried over the Kashmir problem that
India has constantly stressed the need for a genuine India-Pakistan
dialogue under this accord as the best way of reaching a mutually
satisfactory settlement. In fact, even the Bush administration had
started drawing attention to the relevance of this agreement as the
basis for a post-cold war bilateral effort to hasten a
reconciliation in South Asia. But President Clinton unfortunately
chose to go by the misconceived advice of officials in the State
Department like Robin Raphel on India-Pakistan problems and
formulated a policy virtually treating the Shimla Agreement as a
dead letter.
The Clinton administration went out of its way to please Pakistan
by this device. Its subsequent decision even to resume arms
supplies to Pakistan further helped to plug the post-Bush tilt
towards Pakistan. Raphel had apparently convinced Clinton that
this was the best guarantee of the survival of Benazir Bhutto in
power so that she could strengthen democracy in Pakistan and also
fall in line easily with the American scheme of things as far as
Kashmir was concerned. But the trick did not work. In fact it
backfired. Benazir's eventual dismissal (by no means a surprise
given Pakistan's history) and her party's rout in the elections
three months later demonstrated the utter falsity of the facile
assumptions underlying the Clinton administration's Pakistan
policy. The growing doubts in the American establishment about the
worth of motivated advice of the likes of Robin Raphel were
inevitably reinforced. She then started discounting any push for
parity between India and Pakistan as the core of US policy towards
South Asia. A new approach favoured by the Foreign Policy Council,
one of the influential think-tanks in Washington, was widely
publicised.
After all this, American officials still seem to be afflicted with
a hangover of the old policy framed by the pro-Pakistan lobby in
the US administration. It is difficult otherwise to understand why
Frank G Wisner should fight shy of supporting an India-Pakistan
dialogue specifically within the framework of the Shimla Agreement.
In the Jammu speech, he did acknowledge the value of the political
process initiated by the Indian Government which has culminated in
the formation of the elected government headed by Farooq Abdullah.
But, characteristically enough, he made it a point to balance this
utterance with an apparent gesture to Pakistan and the known
anti-Indian factions in Kashmir. This line in turn has been
dutifully replicated by the Hurriyet leadership. On the face of
it, they proclaimed a shift by openly calling for the vacation by
Pakistan of the part of Jammu and Kashmir under its occupation so
long. But they combined this with renewed stress on a settlement
"between India, Pakistan and the people of Kashmir" - the formula
which the US has been at pains to popularise for so long.
In the name of realism, Wisner has often talked of the need to
adjust policies in South Asia to a changing situation. He himself
would be admirably realistic if he were to accept that no
government in New Delhi would tolerate even a hint of secessionist
activity, however nicely it might be packaged with or without
American help. Nor should noble causes such as peace,
reconciliation and honouring "people's will" be allowed to become
pretexts for unacceptable foreign interference in this country's
affairs.
In the final analysis, it will be up to the newly elected
government of Pakistan to break the prolonged impasse on bilateral
issues including, naturally, Kashmir. The likely long-term
significance of Sharif's sweeping victory for Pakistan's polity is
still far from a clear. How he will come to grips with the new
situation in Jammu and Kashmir following the installation of the
Abdullah government there is even more clouded with uncertainty.
Much will depend upon what lessons he has drawn from the failure of
Pakistan's confrontationist policy on Kashmir.
For the time being at least, Sharif's prompt reply has raised hopes
of an early resumption of long-stalled bilateral talks. The
Pakistan Prime Minister has called for a summit after a preparatory
meeting between the two foreign secretaries. I K Gujral has given
an assurance of a positive reply. When the proposed dialogue does
start without much loss of time in so-called modalities, the
chances of a breakthrough will improve only if Sharif is interested
in bringing to bear new thinking on all the old issues including,
of course, Kashmir. That he regards Kashmir as the core issue
cannot be a bar to a serious quest for substantive mutual
accommodation.
The author is former Senior Editor, The Indian Express
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