Senior diplomats of India and Pakistan have just concluded a meeting in Islamabad to launch the fourth round of what is popularly described as a composite dialogue aiming at resolving outstanding issues and disputes peacefully. There is once again a bland statement that promises no breakthrough but a continuity of discussions. It is a peace process that began after a ten-month long military confrontation between two nuclear powers in 2001 and 2002. Even as nearly a million troops withdrew from the border, there was the formidable task of restoring diplomatic and communication links that had been severely curtailed. The composite dialogue revived and amplified unimplemented decisions taken in 1997-98 to normalize relations and since its inception has traversed a steady, if slow, trajectory.
The greatest gain so far has been that the impulse to confront each other militarily seems to be giving way to a resolve to talk; a new culture of negotiations is taking roots. The resilience of the current dialogue which has weathered storms on the way comes partly from a fresh recognition in both countries that military stand-offs of 1986, 1990 and 2001 were futile and partly from the international community that is preoccupied with risks of a nuclear exchange ever since India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons in 1998. They have conducted several tests of nuclear capable missiles of short and medium range since then testifying to their ability to hit targets accurately anywhere in South Asia.
The latest meeting was preceded by a number of helpful events. India’s External Affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee was in Islamabad 13 Jan. 13 to put his seal on the continuation of the “composite dialogue”. His Pakistan counterpart, Khurshid Kasuri co-chaired a meeting of a multitasked Ministerial Joint Commission in New Delhi in February. The decision to enhance strategic stability produced an agreement on cooperation on risks of nuclear accidents raising hopes that more significant nuclear risk reduction measures would be considered in the days to come. Above all, a meeting of officials had deliberated the structure and functioning of a joint mechanism to combat terrorism as envisaged in a meeting between President Musharraf and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during the Havana summit of nonaligned nations.
In spite of noticeable improvement in the climate of bilateral relations, India and Pakistan have yet to make a shift from conflict management to conflict resolution. No significant progress on major issues such as the future of the disputed territory of Kashmir and the Indian demand for an across-the-board economic collaboration has taken place. From the Pakistani side, President Musharraf has signaled his readiness to give up insistence on a plebiscite under the auspices of the United Nations. Instead he has talked of demilitarization and self-governance. He has defined self-governance as something between autonomy and independence. The Pakistani proposals have led to controversy within Pakistan and amongst the people of Kashmir. More seriously, they have failed to elicit a positive response from the Indian side. Because of their tentative nature, these radical new ideas are discussed more frequently in a secret channel established by the two states than in their formal diplomatic negotiations. In a notable departure from its tradition, the Indian armed forces have recently expressed a negative view of the Pakistani proposal of demilitarization. President Musharraf had also spoken of the possibility of joint management of Kashmir without providing any details but this idea has already been scotched by the Indian leadership.
For economic cooperation, India is keen to obtain overland transit through Pakistan to Afghanistan and Central Asia. Pakistan links this facility to a settlement of Kashmir though, at the conceptual level, it accepts the great potential of Afghanistan becoming a land bridge between South Asia and Central Asia. The lack of stability in Afghanistan also tends to make it somewhat premature to engage in serious negotiations on the subject. Both India and Pakistan recognize the economic and strategic promise of a proposed Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline that would create positive interdependence. The future of this pipeline is, however, uncertain because of strong opposition from the United States.
It is often said that the bilateral dialogue produced a series of confidence-building measures that restored links snapped during the crisis of 2001-02 and promoted people-to-people contacts as never before but got stuck in a plateau when called upon to resolve acrimonious issues such as Kashmir. There is no longer any justification in maintaining a confrontationist military posture in the dizzy heights of the Siachin Glacier in the Karakorum Range of mountains. Soldiers keep dying in avalanches even when both sides scrupulously maintain a cease-fire. In principle both sides have agreed to disengage by redeployment to lower reaches but the Indian Army still has some reservations about it. On March 14, the diplomats agreed that this disengagement will soon be discussed by defense officials.
Pakistan has been waiting for the Indian prime minister to take up an invitation to visit Pakistan in the hope that a summit will energize the peace process. He has expressed interest in a treaty of peace and friendship with Pakistan in his public pronouncements but the stage has not been set for it. There is doubtless a huge peace dividend in a grand reconciliation in South Asia but so far it is eluding India and Pakistan. The best hope is that the composite dialogue will rise to a higher plain symbolized by an early visit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Pakistan before too long.
— Tanvir Ahmad Khan is a former foreign secretary and ambassador of Pakistan to several countries.
