The outcome was disappointing at last month’s summit in Agra, India, between Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Valpayee and Pakistan’s General Pervez Musharraf. But this has not silenced debate about this historic event in Washington’s corridors of power. Judging from the tone and volume of this high-level rhetoric, subsequent meetings between India and Pakistan are certain to be spirited. Just last week, for example, the American Institute of International Studies, a California-based public policy research institution, held a half-day forum in Washington, DC, entitled, “Did the Agra Summit Improve the Prospects for Peace between India and Pakistan?” Invited panelists, said AIIS President Syed R. Mahmood, were selected to ensure the opinions being offered were fair, balanced and could “help promote a just peace between India and Pakistan.”
(Though the Pakistan Embassy honored its commitment to send a representative to the AIIS event, the Indian Embassy refused the invitation out of hand. Just as the issue of Kashmir proved to be greatest stumbling block for negotiators at Agra, the disputed territory also proved to be one of the most divisive at last week’s AIIS forum. “Not admitting there is a problem in Kashmir is the biggest problem,” Mahmood noted in his opening remarks. “If the parties can agree to this, this will break the ice and move other negotiations forward. I hope this will occur when the parties get together again next September in Islamabad.”
Stephen Cohen, a scholar in residence at Washington’s Brookings Institution, shared Mahmood’s concern. “Did the summit advance the cause of peace? Yes. Did the summit advance the possibility of war? Yes,” warned Cohen. Cohen said the most positive outcome of the Agra summit “is that it made it easier for the media in both countries to talk about the Kashmir issue it also focused world media attention on Kashmir.”
However, Cohen admonished that the meeting in Agra was the “least prepared summit I’ve ever witnessed,” and he warned, “groups in both countries have succeeded in blocking the peace process.”
He praised the Agra summit, and said subsequent talks between India and Pakistan will be far more successful if the United States takes a strong role as a “facilitator and honest broker. I believe India and Pakistan are not capable of carrying this process to fruition without America’s involvement,” said Cohen. Michael Krepon, President Emeritus of the Washington-based Stimson Center, a public policy “think tank,” does not share Cohen’s optimism. Krepon believes India has been the more accommodating party in the negotiations, and fears “there won’t be any additional initiatives by India.”
Krepon believed Pakistan could enhance its stature in the talks by abandoning its insistence that the situation in Kashmir be resolved before all other issues, and make an effort to better control the transshipment of drugs through the region, condemn terrorism, permit more cross-border trade, and “allow divided families to meet.”
Krepon’s criticism of Pakistan did not go unremarked by Zamir Akram, Deputy Chief of Mission at the Pakistan Embassy in Washington. “We do not share the view that Agra was a failure,” Akram told the AIIS forum. “It was inconclusive. But it did put in place a dialogue that will be sustained and progressive. Does Kashmir over-shadows any constructive dialogue between us? Of course it does. But we do not think Kashmir stands in the way of other areas,” Akram said. “But we also want to make it clear that we won’t talk about other issues unless we also discuss the issue of Kashmir.”
Akram blamed the perceived failure of the summit on “unnecessary and unrealistically high expectations,” and acknowledged now that it “could have been more prudent if India and Pakistan had hammered out some sort of joint declaration” at the conclusion of the summit. “The real problem,” said Akram,” is that we agree about talking about issues but then we get bogged down in our own talking points. What is needed is a willingness to compromise, and to arrive at an agreement. You must have that political climate in order to have successful negotiations.”
Akram attributed much of the acrimony between India and Pakistan to expatriate American interest groups and lobbyists. Akram said the United States has apparently yielded to some of this pressure, citing as an example America’s unwillingness “to enforce the United Nations resolutions that apply to Kashmir and other resolutions that affect India-Pakistan relations.”
“Unfortunately,” Akram added, “the US commitment to democracy is often sacrificed on the altar of political interests.”
