Ceasefire offer

Sir, - The Prime Minister, Mr. A. B. Vajpayee, announcing a unilateral ceasefire in Jammu and Kashmir during Ramzan and the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen and the Lashkar-e-Taiba rejecting the peace offer soon after, gives one a feeling of deja vu as it is darkly reminiscent of the ceasefire offer from the Hizb and the dramatic withdrawal of the peace initiative last August (``Hizb, Lashkar reject peace offer'', The Hindu, Nov. 21).

Pakistan and the Pakistan-backed militants, after having shrewdly played the religious card against India at the OIC summit at Doha - notwithstanding the fact that India is home to the second largest Islamic community in the world - are now contradicting themselves by blasphemously ridiculing the peace offer that would have at least brought temporary respite to the long-suffering Kashmiris, during the holy month of Ramzan. The near panic reaction and the violent response from some of the militant groups that every peace initiative evokes is indicative of an abject lack of sincerity among the representatives of the separatist groups of J&K to resolve the Kashmir issue.

Not wanting to take chances about a wedge being driven between the indigenous militants and the foreign-backed militants, unlike during the Hizb's peace offer, this time Pakistan wasted no time in beating about the bush about its insistence that any peace talks that the militants might have with the Centre be tripartite - and also ensured that the militants insist on the same.

It would be no exaggeration to state that under the military rule, bilateral relations between India and Pakistan seem to have deteriorated to a point of no return. Knowing fully well that bilateral ties between the two countries are at their lowest ebb, it seems unreasonable to insist on tripartite talks, with the involvement of India's warring neighbour in the first phase itself. With Gen. Musharraf's rather ill-concealed hatred for India, tripartite talks to solve the J&K issue cannot be anything but a fruitless endeavour. Apparently, this is just an excuse to deny the Kashmiris even a remotest chance for peace in their embattled State. What is pathetic is that in spite of their bravado, the J&K militants are cutting a sorry figure today by being reduced to mere puppets on their sponsor's strings and parroting its sentiments. By insisting on the involvement of Pakistan, they are only undermining their own ability to make decisions for themselves.

Nalini Vijayaraghavan,

Thiruvananthapuram

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