CIAO DATE: 01/03

The Agra Summit

Teresita Schaffer and Mandavi Mehta

The South Asia Monitor
Number 36
August 1, 2001

The Center for Strategic and International Studies

 

The three-day summit between Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf, their first contact since Musharraf took power in October 1999, ended without a joint statement. Both sides subsequently stressed their intention to continue working on their countries’ troubled relationship. Although few expected a breakthrough at the summit, the leaders’ failure to agree on a process for resolving differences between India and Pakistan will strengthen the hard-liners in both countries. The two leaders are due to meet again on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly this fall, as well as later this year in Pakistan. Neither can afford a repeat performance, and both governments have much work to do before Vajpayee and Musharraf meet again.

India: Keeping the initiative: India claims all of the old princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. It denies any real Pakistani role in resolving the problems in Kashmir, and asserts that the Kashmir “issue” is only one of a long list of problems on the table with Pakistan. Many believe that India could accept a settlement that turned the current Line of Control between the Indian- and Pakistani-held parts of Kashmir into an international border. However, Indian government and opposition figures alike vocally reject any hint of compromise at this early stage.

India’s position on the substance of its problems with Pakistan has not changed, but Prime Minister Vajpayee and some of his closest advisers seem to have concluded early this year that their efforts to isolate Pakistan and their refusal of political-level contact were not working. Vajpayee’s current approach appears to have three primary elements:

• Keep the process moving: India’s positive initial response to the Kashmiri ceasefire initiative last August fits this pattern. So do the Indian ceasefire declaration in early December, the three extensions of the ceasefire, the nomination of a special negotiator with the Kashmiris after the ceasefire lost its luster, and finally the invitation to Musharraf.
• Keep the initiative in India’s hands: India’s distaste for third-party intervention in its discussions with Pakistan is well known. Its recent actions suggest a strong preference for unilateral moves. Besides the measures listed above, examples include India’s pre-summit announcement that it would issue visas to Pakistanis at the Line of Control. This gesture was a welcome response to the long-standing complaint that innocent contact among Kashmiris was being held hostage to India-Pakistan problems. However, it caused understandable resentment on the Pakistan side, because it signaled India’s lack of interest in working out such progress jointly and giving Pakistan a share of the credit.
• Start with the Kashmiris: The ideal Kashmir settlement, from India’s perspective, would have the Kashmiris reconcile themselves to remaining within India without passing through any negotiations with Pakistan. Indian officials hope to entice enough Kashmiri politicians into the Indian electoral process to restore tranquility in Kashmir, and to undercut the argument that India represses the Kashmiri people. Unlike some others in his government, however, Vajpayee recognizes that Pakistan must be part of the process for a settlement to survive. India’s major moves in the last six months have alternated between gestures toward the Kashmiris (such as the ceasefire) and Pakistan-oriented events (such as the invitation to Musharraf). This pattern makes both the Kashmiris and Pakistan uneasy about being marginalized, a result the Indians probably quietly welcome.

The Indian government is at best ambivalent about the question of Kashmiri leadership. It prefers to deal with Farooq Abdullah’s National Conference, which made its peace with India years ago and which was elected, in controversial elections, to lead the state government in Kashmir. The Conference, however, has little popular credibility. It is hard to see how any settlement can take root without including leaders connected with the Kashmiri militancy, a group India would find less friendly. The All Parties Hurriyet Conference (APHC) claims the leadership mantle, and the Indian government has intermittently been willing to deal with them.

Previous Indian peacemaking gestures laid bare disagreements within the Indian government on how far India ought to soft-pedal its position in the interest of launching a new initiative. In his dialogue with Kashmiris and with Pakistan, Vajpayee has carefully avoided spelling out his view of Kashmir as an “integral part of India,” only to have his subtlety undercut by statements from members of India’s nationalist movement. This increased the importance the Indians attached to the other subject of verbal gymnastics ” the hoped-for statement by Pakistan that it would foreswear “cross-border terrorism.”

Pakistan: Prominence for Kashmir, legitimacy for Musharraf: Pakistan, by contrast, has spent the last year and a half stressing its willingness to talk to India. Besides the Pakistani government’s many statements to that effect, Pakistan also responded to India’s ceasefire in December with troop reductions along the Line of Control (LOC) in the hope of bringing about a high-level dialogue. Musharraf’s unexpected telephone call and offer of assistance after the earthquake in Gujarat in January 2001 was designed to present Pakistan as a responsible member of the international community. Pakistan, in general, and Musharraf, in particular, craved the legitimacy a high-level dialogue would bestow.

Pakistan has long and unsuccessfully sought Indian recognition of the centrality of the Kashmir dispute. Both countries’ diplomats are adept at ensuring that their preferred vocabulary is prominently featured. The theme of Kashmir as “the core issue” appeared daily in Pakistani press statements during the week before the summit. The composition of the Pakistani delegation to the summit reinforced the point: about half the intended participants, including the commerce minister, were cut from the delegation at the last minute.

Diplomacy by media blitz: Once Musharraf arrived in India the media took center stage. The summit generated the frenzied atmosphere usually reserved for sporting events between these two cricket-mad nations. The game was carried out on the field and in the press, with every move eagerly dissected by the proliferation of 24-hour satellite channels that crowd the South Asian airwaves. This transparency magnified misunderstandings and publicized statements that might impede future dialogue. Indian information and broadcasting minister Sushma Swaraj’s press briefing on the substance of the talks, which made no mention at all of Kashmir, led to Musharraf’s televised breakfast meeting with editors of major newspapers, pursuing his campaign to get India to acknowledge the primacy of Kashmir. The Indian delegation, upset with Musharraf’s performance, retaliated by releasing Vajpayee’s opening statement to the summit, which stressed the terrorism issue, and by denying Musharraf a final press conference before he left India, gestures that made the Indians look heavy-handed.

In this atmosphere, the joint statement fell apart. It appears that the two delegations were tantalizingly close to joint language, which their leaders ultimately could not accept in the overheated public environment of the summit’s last hours. The deal-breakers, unsurprisingly, were the phrases characterizing Kashmir and terrorism, but the real culprit was overblown public expectations.

Judging by more realistic standards, however, the summit made a modest step in the right direction. Within a day after Musharraf flew home, both foreign ministers made public statements remarkable for their deft touch, their avoidance of neuralgic phrases, and their commitment to future dialogue. Both ministers spoke of planned summit meetings in New York in September, and in Pakistan later. These unilateral announcements sounded as if they had been jointly drafted.

In addition, India said it would implement the unilateral confidence-building measures (CBMs) announced on the eve of the summit, which cover trade, visa issues, educational exchanges, and security. The two sides discussed nuclear risk-reduction measures, cooperation to stop drug trafficking and other cross-border issues, and trade relations.

The scorecard: Musharraf probably gained more from the summit than Vajpayee. His excursion to his childhood home touched people on a human level, and the extraordinary beauty of the Taj Mahal reminded audiences in both countries of India and Pakistan’s shared cultural heritage. Musharraf was crisp, direct, and most importantly reasonable. He was widely praised in Pakistan for “standing firm” on the centrality of Kashmir. Although this strengthens his domestic position, it will also make future compromises more difficult. Militant groups in Pakistan have used the summit to illustrate the futility of talks with India and to reiterate that violence is the only way to make headway on Kashmir.

Vajpayee, on the other hand, was politically hurt by the unseemly public display of his disagreements with his political party and even with his own advisors. He faces a reinvigorated challenge from the right wing. Vajpayee’s leadership is crucial to any Indian peace effort, so his political and physical health are particularly important.

Looking ahead: The critical question is how to turn this modest record of achievement into a serious peace process, and to prevent the hard-liners in both countries from reclaiming the agenda. Eighty people died in Kashmir during the talks. Moving toward peace will require both governments to tame their internal critics.

Neither side can afford a protracted crisis in their relations. For Pakistan, the conflict drains resources away from addressing its fragile economy and its institutional crisis. For India, the ‘Pakistan trap’ diminishes its international standing and blocks its aspirations, and the protracted low-intensity conflict in Kashmir has a high cost in people and treasure. India and Pakistan cannot solve their problems without addressing Kashmir, and a solution to the Kashmir issue must include India, Pakistan, and the Kashmiris.

Needed: A sustainable process: As Vajpayee recognized in his speech describing the summit for the Indian parliament, India and Pakistan need to agree on a process for discussing their problems. A viable process would provide Pakistan with a setting for discussing Kashmir from the start, but would also accommodate the broader agenda prized by India. It would need the sustained personal backing of Musharraf and Vajpayee to survive the inevitable crises that would interrupt it. Both countries would need steady leadership to persevere until they can sustain the strategic compromise a genuine settlement requires.