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The talks almost produced an Agra Accord but the positions of Delhi and Islamabad are still wildly incompatible
One of the first things a commando learns in military school is that a battle never follows a script. Audacious dare-devilry must inevitably be accompanied by constant improvisation. The greater the surprise the more the chances of success. These are lessons General Pervez Musharraf, regarded in Pakistan Army circles as an exemplary commando, learnt on the job. Blessed with a great tactical sense that incorporated all the elements of psychological warfare, he arrived in Agra on the morning of July 15 aware that his hosts were in a state of nervous anxiety. Used to the staid ways of conventional diplomacy, they were puzzled by the outlandish ways of the Pakistani President. Outraged by his insistence on blessing the Hurriyat Conference, bemused by his request to combine a visit to his old home in Delhi's Daryaganj with a visit to the congested Jama Masjid, impressed by his pre-visit courting of the media, they didn't quite know what to make of the man.
Musharraf wasn't overwhelmed by the same degree of confusion. He didn't come with a script but he was reasonably clear about his objectives: use the "unstructured" agenda of the Agra Summit to plead, cajole and hector Prime Minister A.B.Vajpayee into conceding the primacy of Kashmir in Indo-Pak relations, and bulldoze an Agra Accord-which could be distinguished from the Simla Agreement and the Lahore Declaration. When he received Vajpayee's invitation on May 23, Musharraf was just a Chief Executive desperate for legitimacy. He aimed to return to Pakistan not merely as the unchallenged President but a statesman-the man who had broken a 53-year-old stalemate and come one step closer to avenging Pakistan's 1971 humiliation.
It didn't quite happen that way. At 11.10 p.m. on July 16, more than eight hours after his scheduled departure, it was a "reflective" Musharraf who stepped into a waiting limousine at Jaypee Palace hotel to be driven to Agra airport. There were no public farewells, not even the customary handshake with Vajpayee for the cameras. The Indian prime minister didn't even see his guest off to the car. Curtly denied the permission for a press conference-a request made and turned down even before the visit was under way-he left in the cover of darkness, the unsigned Agra Accord in his jacket pocket. "Koshish jari rahegi (I will continue trying)," he told Digvijay Singh, the minister in waiting.
Yet it could just as easily have been a different story. A story whose ending would have resulted in Musharraf making major, but not spectacular, gains and Vajpayee having to explain why he allowed the General's cowboy diplomacy to make headway. Unfortunately for Pakistan, Musharraf the commando went for broke and returned not only empty-handed but with a terse Indian response that as far as it was concerned, the inconclusive summit was a non-event. "We will have to begin again on the basis of existing agreements-Simla Agreement and Lahore Declaration," said the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson, just a day after her minister Jaswant Singh told a press conference in Agra, "We will pick up the threads from the visit of the President of Pakistan."
Not that Musharraf ever expected the past to be instantly disowned. Agra, he had calculated, would be his finest hour, his victory over what he thought was a dispirited India led by a man who was anxious to make peace at any cost, if only to upstage hardliners in his Government. "It was due to destiny that I am here sitting in front of you in Agra to resolve our problems," he told Vajpayee at his first one-on-one meeting at 11.20 a.m.on July 15. "Let us solve this problem (Kashmir) first and we can go on to others later."
Vajpayee had been thoroughly briefed
on what Jaswant would later call Pakistan's "unifocal" approach. Speaking
in Hindi-just as Musharraf had initially wanted-he told the General, "We
are willing to discuss everything including Kashmir but let us begin from
where we ended: Lahore. Terrorism is very much alive. Kashmir cannot be
resolved unless we stop cross-border terrorism." Vajpayee went on for another
seven minutes, stressing the need for a composite dialogue on each of the
eight subjects identified by the foreign secretaries in New York in September
1998.
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