Managing a summit 'sub-plot'

WITHOUT MUCH ADO, Pakistan's President and Chief Executive, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, succeeded in engaging the Islamabad-friendly leaders of the All Party Hurriyat Conference on the eve of the ongoing Agra summit. Be it a deft stroke of diplomacy or indeed a clever exercise in damage-control, Gen. Musharraf chose to strike a low political posture as he spoke to the Hurriyat leaders ahead of a public reception that was held in his honour by Pakistan's High Commissioner in New Delhi on Saturday. As a result, the meeting between Pakistan's President and the Hurriyat did not assume the proportions of a mini-summit within a major summit. In any case, a sinister gameplan of this magnitude was not manifest in the many statements that Gen. Musharraf had made prior to his departure from Pakistan for the summit, now in progress. However, New Delhi was not amused all the while at the perceived gamble by Pakistan to push the Hurriyat along a track of self-esteem as the ``legitimate'' representative of the ``Kashmiri people''. This accounted for New Delhi's deep suspicions that Gen. Musharraf's eagerness to exchange views with the Hurriyat on the sidelines of a tea party might have indeed cloaked his calculations about a perceived `sub-plot'. New Delhi's fear was that he might have wanted to complicate the Kashmir issue for the purposes of the much-planned Agra summit itself. It is in this context that both Islamabad and New Delhi deserve to be commended for ensuring that the Musharraf- Hurriyat dialogue passed without a dangerous fuss.

By design or otherwise in a planned montage of many symbolic events on the first day of Gen. Musharraf's current visit to India, he found himself being greeted by the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Dr. Farooq Abdullah, at the lunch that the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, hosted in honour of his guest from Pakistan. In a sense, Gen. Musharraf was perhaps reminded, if that was necessary, about New Delhi's assiduous policy of drawing a distinction between the elected leadership of Jammu and Kashmir and the Hurriyat's attempts to claim a superior representative status. As if to complete the circle of contentious representational politics in regard to the big picture of Jammu and Kashmir, a member of the Pandit community was also reported to have managed to catch the attention of Pakistan's leader at the tea party. While it is obvious that the pre-summit mood on the bilateral front had neither been vitiated nor enhanced by these `happenings', it bears repetition that the Vajpayee administration, which represents a vibrant democracy, need not have allowed the Hurriyat issue to acquire the kind of salience it did. Gen. Musharraf's reaffirmation of Pakistan's support for the Hurriyat is not a new reality.

On a separate plane of diplomatic sentimentalism befitting the eve of a critical summit, Gen. Musharraf did well to recognise the magnificent message of the Mahatma as a political verity with an enduring relevance. It was, however, left to the President, Mr. K. R. Narayanan, to capture the quintessential spirit of the unfinished search for a defining moment towards friendship between India and Pakistan. Mr. Narayanan clearly pointed to a broad direction as he made eloquent references to the ennobling thoughts of Gandhiji and to Mohammad Ali Jinnah's vision of a long-term relationship between Pakistan and India. If even a pragmatic and mutually beneficial amity is not to remain the proverbial utopia, the leaders of the two countries should address their core interests without hesitation. In this context, it was a good sign that the External Affairs and Defence Minister, Mr. Jaswant Singh, as also the Home Minister, Mr. L. K. Advani, and the Leader of the Opposition, Ms. Sonia Gandhi, seemed to have minced no words in their meetings with Gen. Musharraf prior to the summit even as he outlined his expectations.

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