Vijay Mohan
Tribune News ServiceChandigarh, November 10
With the subcontinent witnessing improvement in Indo-Pak bilateral relations on one hand and worsening situation in Nepal and Bangladesh on the other, former Foreign Secretary, Mr Jagat S. Mehta today suggested that India and Pakistan should join hands to restore stability in Nepal and save Bangladesh from militant extremism.
This, he said, would lead to economic benefits, functional harmonisation and optimisation of free trade without permanent artificial barriers. In the end, he added, all partners would gain from maximizing the advantages of geography so as to optimize national economic health.
He was here to deliver a talk on the Future of South Asia as part of the P.N. Haksar Memorial Lecture-cum-Seminar Series, being organised at the Centre for Research in Industrial and Rural Development, here.
Stating that nuclear weapons possessed by either country are of no use except, perhaps as a sign of prestige, he added that both countries would have to open their facilities for international inspection. Nuclear proliferation, he said, is bound to happen, as technology and knowledge cannot be kept under wraps today. The target of both countries, he said, must be to reduce defence expenditure.
He said that rationalisation in the utilisation of the Indus canal system and a link canal from the Chenab into the Ravi, without affecting Pakistani colonies, could provide more water to Haryana and Rajasthan.
Stating that the Indo-Pak peace process is firmly on an upward parth with no chance of irreversibility, Mr Mehta said that the real catalyst of the positive transformation of bilateral relations was the American political failure in Iraq in 2003, precipitating the hate-America feeling all over the Muslim world.
Till 2003, both India and Pakistan were seeing each other through the prism of permanent political hostility. In his broadcast in 2002, Pakistan president, Gen Pervez Musharraf had decried terrorist organisations like the Taliban, but had termed terrorists in Kashmir as freedom fighters. Later things became different.
He said that developments in India-Pakistan relations in the past two years have exposed as fallacious, the hold of local and foreign pessimists. The amazing constructive improvement has surprised decision makers and South Asia experts.
Stating that optimising functional cooperation still has a long way to go, he added that the gains would only be optimal if all constituent countries and their civilian and military establishments see the benefits of shorter transportation and economic complementarily.
The former Foreign Secretary said that history is replete with instances of diplomatic disasters and miscalculations. Today India, Pakistan and the US are tortuously reaping the dragon seeds of their own misinterpretations. India’s problems in Kashmir and the Kargil intervention might have been averted if in 1980 India had not been hypnotised by the cold War perceptions of the US. India-Pakistan reconciliation, which began in 2004, might have got under way as far back as 1980, when the only time the threat to Pakistan through Afghanistan looked more ominous that that from India. Misjudgments from the Carter White House provided a golden opportunity for Indian diplomacy, which was missed.
