Author: Chandan Mitra/Agra
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: July 17, 2001
The inevitable happened. The Indo-Pak
summit, so boldly conceived by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, wound
itself to an outright failure shortly before midnight on Monday. Pakistan
President Pervez Musharraf's belligerence and inflexibility was eventually
reciprocated by uncharacteristic firmness from the Prime Minister and his
colleagues, resulting in the breakdown.
Nearly nine hours of intimate conversation
between the two leaders yielded no result and a dejected President Musharraf
left Agra after three fruitless days in the country of his birth. All he
could finally say to Mr Vajpayee on the porch of the Jaypee Palace Hotel
at the end of his hour-long farewell call was Khuda Hafiz.
However, Ministry of External Affairs
spokesperson Nirupama Rao told a packed media centre at the Mughal Sheraton
hotel at 12. 20 a.m. Tuesday, that the commencement of a process and the
beginning of a journey has taken place. Simultaneously, she said she was
disappointed that it did not materialise in a joint statement. The formal
expounding of the Indian position will happen on Tuesday at 10 am, she
further informed. Ill-behaved Pakistani mediapersons attempted to manhandle
Ms Rao in a horrific display of frustration.
The failure of the summit underlined
the intense complexity of the issues in dispute. Apportioning of blame
began instantly with Pakistani spokesperson Maj Gen Rashid Qureshi laying
the responsibility for the fiasco squarely at India's door. He sought to
suggest that differences of perception within the Indian team were at the
root of the failure. Maj Gen Qureshi further put a fictional spin on the
failure, claiming the drafts of the joint declaration okayed by the Prime
Minister and EAM were scuttled by mysterious powers.
Highly informed sources in the Government
told The Pioneer that the turning point came when the full import of the
General's bellicose utterances at his breakfast meeting with Indian editors
dawned on the Indian leadership. India, which had been most accommodating
till Sunday night, despite the Pakistan President's obsessive concern with
Kashmir and Kashmir alone, concluded that the General was simply using
the forum provided to him only for propagating his viewpoint and was not
sincere in his approach.
The feeling also was that the General
had decided by last night that the talks were not heading anywhere and
therefore went about systematically dismantling all prospects of success.
The portents were ill since midnight on Monday. The sequence started when
the Pakistanis took the unusual step of issuing a press statement strongly
countering Information and Broadcasting Minister Sushma Swarajs narration
of issues discussed earlier that day.
The interpretation is that President
Musharraf was alarmed by what he saw as an Indian plot to divert the talks
towards subjects other than Kashmir. Since the Pakistan leader was adamant
on discussing only Kashmir he feared a major loss of face before his domestic
(and, of course, the jehadi) constituency. That is what prompted the General
into televised bellicosity during his breakfast meeting with Indian editors.
However, all was still not lost.
After his one-on-one with Mr Vajpayee immediately following the controversial
breakfast there was still hope of a joint declaration. This was to emphasise
mutual commitment to continue the dialogue process that the General had
identified as the first step towards the solution of the Kashmir issue.
Top Govt sources said the Pakistanis
sent a draft declaration across to the Indian headquarters at Jaypee Palace
hotel early this afternoon. The draft emphasised the centrality of the
Kashmir issue and the need to ascertain the will of the Kashmiri people.
It skirted the cross-border terrorism factor altogether which was not unexpected
considering that President Musharraf had described the violence in the
State as an expression of indigenous freedom struggle comparable to Palestine.
The sources said that India was
ready to climb down to some extent, conveying to Pakistan that if they
dropped the centrality point, we would be agreeable not to mention cross-border
terrorism.
But after much to-ing and fro-ing
between Jaypee Palace and Amar Vilas, this formula too collapsed. Obviously
President Musharraf could not risk abandoning the Kashmir point. Similarly,
the Prime Minister and his colleagues felt that cross-border terrorism
was at the core of Indias concerns and one could not be accommodated without
reference to the other.
Following the General's belligerent
remarks in the morning the otherwise subdued Indian response was suddenly
hiked with the release of a 9-point opening statement made by Mr Vajpayee
at the outset of the summit on Sunday morning. The terrorism and violence
being promoted in the State (J&K) from across its borders do not help
to create (a conducive) atmosphere, the Prime Minister had categorically
told General Musharraf. But India had refrained from releasing this document
on Sunday. Only after the Pakistan President's televised declarations on
Monday morning did India decide to reply in kind.
By late afternoon on Monday, the
summit seemed inexorably headed towards collapse. The media was kept on
tenterhooks with the time of the joint declaration being made public shifting
every half hour. Finally, the curtains fell, past midnight, shortly after
President Musharraf departed for the airport in a cavalcade with his delegation.
