Flurry of pre-summit gestures

THE UNILATERAL MOVE by the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, to announce people-friendly gestures ahead of his prospective meeting with Pakistan's President and Chief Executive, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, is evidently designed to stir the conscience of the citizens of both countries towards sentiments of goodwill. Outwardly, Mr. Vajpayee can indeed be seen to have unveiled a bold proposal concerning the highly militarised Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir. He wants the LoC to be thrown open to people with Pakistan's passports at select points. The discernible objective is to allow the people residing in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir to travel to the Indian side of the LoC so as to interact with friends and relatives and also establish new links of goodwill. New Delhi has sought to portray this gesture as an integral part of an overall framework of friendship at the people's level. An old rail link between Rajasthan and Pakistan's Sindh province will also be restored under the latest package of ideas. New Delhi's proposal to facilitate the movement of people across the borders of the two countries should be seen as a sequel to Mr. Vajpayee's recent call for talks with Pakistan at the level of either experts or officials on such critical issues as peace along the LoC and bilateral confidence-building measures (CBMs) in regard to a range of mutual concerns including nuclear security.

Now, India cannot easily implement its people-friendly initiatives without Pakistan's considered consent as also cooperation. It requires no scientific exactitude of rocket science to recognise that Pakistan's active involvement will be as essential to catalyse the peaceful movement of people and ideas across the LoC as it is to reach an accord on CBMs. While diplomacy of the populist kind is eminently relevant to the prospects of long-term peaceful coexistence, India and Pakistan cannot hope to normalise their relationship without an agreement between the Governments of the two countries in an exercise of their free will. It will be an error of judgment to imagine that New Delhi's latest round of diplomatic activism, manifest in diverse areas ranging from nuclear security to trade and people- to-people contacts, can crowd out the Kashmir issue from a pivotal position at the planned Agra summit on July 15. Mr. Vajapyee has, of course, secured an all-party national consensus that the upcoming summit should not be held hostage to the Kashmir issue. Yet, the big picture of India-Pakistan ties can be improved only through candid discussions on all issues without reservations from either side.

It is in this context that Mr. Vajpayee's latest dream of converting the LoC into a virtual line of stability will need to be seen by Pakistan in much the same light. Three factors acquire importance as a result. First, New Delhi has clarified that security considerations will not be compromised while encouraging civilian travel into India from Pakistan. This may indicate that the Vajpayee administration will take measured steps. Second, Gen. Musharraf himself was reported to have remarked sometime ago that he would be delighted to be able to consider travelling from Srinagar to Muzaffarabad on the Pakistan side of the LoC in an ambience of peace. The third but not the least significant factor is the likely political meaning of any mutually agreed freedom of movement by people across the LoC. For many years, both India and Pakistan have acknowledged the diplomatic relevance of the line as a divider. The principle of the LoC's inviolability in a military sense has been most dramatically established during the Kargil crisis in 1999, and the U.S.' diplomatic persuasion of Pakistan in that connection remains a major event. The question that Islamabad may now address is whether Mr. Vajpayee's notion of authorised civilian movement across the LoC will invest the line with some political connotation of relevance to the final settlement of the Kashmir dispute.

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