New Delhi, August 16
The much awaited meeting between Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York in the last week of September is a non-starter.
There is discernible unease in higher echelons of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government that the proposed Vajpayee-Musharraf interface in New York following the failed Agra summit in July might serve no useful purpose.
Therefore, the overbearing view in New Delhi is that if both leaders are going to draw a blank again, Mr Vajpayee and General Musharraf should skip coming face-to-face in New York. Sources in Islamabad said the line of thinking in General Musharraf’s camp is no different.
Obviously, strategists in the Vajpayee government believe it might be advisable for the two leaders to pursue a “cooling off” period and allow the rhetoric and sabre rattling on both sides to die down. They are sceptical of any worthwhile forward movement between India and Pakistan at this juncture.
While the Vajpayee-Musharraf meeting in New York cannot throw up anything new, Mr Vajpayee is expected to meet US President George Bush and exchange views with him.
With the Republican administration in Washington reviewing the sanctions against India imposed after the May 1998 nuclear tests, it could facilitate carrying forward the high level contacts between the two countries. The prospect of Mr Bush paying an official visit to India in February-March next year assumes significance.
That might lead to putting increasing international pressure on Pakistan to give up cross-border terrorism and work in reducing the threat perception in South Asia.
Though Mr Vajpayee took the initiative in inviting General Musharraf for a summit in Agra and the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan had a meeting during the SAARC standing committee in Colombo last week, the two sides have hit a serious roadblock in providing a meaningful and purposeful content to
the resumed dialogue.
In his Independence Day address to the nation, Mr Vajpayee took the people into confidence and laid the blame at General Musharraf’s door for the deadlock at the Agra summit on July 15 and 16.
Clearly, the central leadership is categoric that Pakistan must stop cross-border terrorism and work in tandem with India for reducing tension by providing an impetus to bilateral economic cooperation. It is the firm belief in the government as well as the private corporate sector that Pakistan will have do business with India to lift itself out of the economic morass.
While New Delhi wants to move forward in normalising relations with Pakistan on the basis of the all-encompassing composite dialogue on the basis of the 1972 Shimla Agreement and the 1999 Lahore Declaration, Islamabad wants centrality to be accorded to the vexed Kashmir problem and refused to accept India’s uppermost concern of putting the brakes on cross-border terrorism.
