NEW DELHI, 14 June 2004 — The peace process between nuclear-armed neighbors India and Pakistan is in danger of dying a slow death, analysts say, with the new Congress-led government in New Delhi neither inclined nor able to compromise over Kashmir.
Sonia Gandhi may have decided to renounce the prime minister’s job after her Congress party won a surprise election victory last month, but her influence still looms large over India’s new government.
And her Italian birth severely limits the coalition’s room for maneuver in talks over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, an issue deeply sensitive to many Indians and one where the right-wing is ready to exploit the faintest sign of weakness.
“You need very strong, confident, nationalist governments on both sides for this process to work,” said Pakistani newspaper editor Najam Sethi.
“But that condition has been eroded by change of government in India, not least because Sonia Gandhi is going to have to constantly fend off accusations of not being nationalist enough.”
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee resuscitated the peace process between the neighbors last year, and brought his Hindu-nationalist government around to the idea of a fresh attempt to make peace.
The 79-year-old poet developed an unlikely rapport with Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf, the two men united in their determination to explore the possibilities of peace and compromise over divided Kashmir.
In the end it is far from clear they could have found a solution to a dispute that has defied solution for more than five decades and almost brought the neighbors to a fourth war in 2002. But with Vajpayee gone from government, and his star waning rapidly even within the BJP, the world may never know.
In late May, Musharraf reached for the phone to call India, apparently concerned that the peace process was going off the rails. But it was not Sonia Gandhi, nor new Prime Minister Manmohan Singh whose number he rang. Instead it was Vajpayee’s.
It was a clear sign, analysts say, of the general’s confidence in his old interlocutor, and his misgivings about the new team. But there was little Vajpayee could do to help.
His party may have started the peace process while in government, but in opposition they are likely to return to their nationalist roots, especially under the parliamentary leadership of the hawkish Lal Krishna Advani. “The whole question of give and take with Pakistan will have to be thrown out of the window now,” a senior BJP member told Reuters shortly after their election defeat. “Sonia, a foreigner, can never convince this country to give anything to Pakistan.”
Perhaps conscious of its vulnerability, Congress has moved swiftly to protect its right flank, appointing two of its most hawkish foreign policy experts to lead it in talks with Pakistan.
Foreign Minister Natwar Singh and National Security Adviser J.N. Dixit have both served in Islamabad and have learned to be deeply suspicious of Pakistan from decades spent in the foreign service. The appointments were greeted with dismay in Islamabad.
“For Kashmir we need people with vision, a politician on the Indian side,” said Sethi. “We don’t need bureaucrats from the foreign office to talk to each other. All they have done all their lives is to sustain the status quo.”
Natwar Singh did not take long to ruffle feathers in Islamabad when he declared — just days after taking office — that the 1972 Shimla agreement should be the bedrock of talks. Reference to that deal, which delineated the Line of Control between the opposing armies in Kashmir, was seen as a coded message — there will be no territorial compromise from India and no choice but to adopt the old cease-fire line as the international border.
It drew an angry response from his counterpart in Islamabad Mian Mehmood Kasuri. “A solution based on the LoC is not acceptable. The status quo is part of the problem, not part of the solution,” he said.
There is little doubt that Congress will struggle to sell any territorial concessions over Kashmir to the Indian people, says retired Pakistani Gen. Talat Masood.
“But having said that, when it came to the resolution of Kashmir, the BJP would not have necessarily given any territorial concessions,” he said. “I think it’s wishful thinking on the part of Pakistan to expect they would have been given some ground.”
Masood says Pakistan will not walk away from the negotiating table even if there is no early solution to the Kashmir dispute — provided the two sides are still talking about the issue and provided there is progress in other areas.
