Ready to pick up the thread, says Jaswant Singh

By C. Raja Mohan

AGRA, JULY 17. The morning after an exhausting summit with the leadership of Pakistan ended inconclusively here, India signalled its determination to stay the course and seek peace and reconciliation with Pakistan.

Seeking to dispel the widespread perception of a failure of the Agra summit, the External Affairs Minister, Mr. Jaswant Singh, today said the two nations covered considerable ground during the last couple of days in finding a framework to deal with their bilateral differences.

India might have been disappointed, but is not disheartened by the turn of events here last night. That was the principal message from Mr. Singh as he told a crowded press conference that India would continue to engage Pakistan at many levels.

The extensive talks at Agra between the Pakistan President, General Pervez Musharraf, and the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, according to Mr. Singh, ``provided an invaluable opportunity'' to both sides to understand each other's ``concerns and compulsions''.

In suggesting that the summit was one more step in the quest for peace with Pakistan, he articulated a sentiment that was later reciprocated in Pakistan by his counterpart, Mr. Abdul Sattar.

On the question of who backed out from signing the ``Agra Declaration'' in the closing stages of the summit, Mr. Singh did not point a finger at Pakistan. Instead, he referred to the complexity of the negotiations with Islamabad.

Mr. Singh proclaimed India's readiness to ``pick up the threads'' from Gen. Musharraf's visit and strive to realise ``peace, friendship and cooperation with Pakistan''.

The decision to stay engaged and not blame each other for the unfinished nature of the business at Agra may be part of an understanding between the two leaders when Gen. Musharraf had a long conversation with Mr. Vajpayee when he called on him to bid farewell last night.

The inability to finalise the ``Agra Declaration'' was because of ``the difficulty in reconciling our basic approaches to bilateral relations'', Mr. Singh conceded. The differences were sharp on three issues, in particular the relationship between Kashmir and the normalisation of bilateral relations.

All indications here are that Pakistan was unwilling to discard its emphasis on a sequential approach in which normalisation would only follow the resolution of the Kashmir problem. India, in contrast, argued for a simultaneous movement on all issues.

Emphasising the ``totality of the relationship'' between the two neighbours, Mr. Singh declared India's conviction that ``narrow, segmented or unifocal approaches will simply not work''.

The other unbridgeable differences at Agra were related to India's concerns over Pakistan's support to cross- border terrorism, Islamabad's reluctance to lend full support to past agreements between the two nations signed at Shimla and Lahore, he said.

Despite these differences, Mr. Singh said the India will continue to promote the peace process with Pakistan. He said India invited Gen. Musharraf to explore the prospects of an accommodation.

The Foreign Minister rejected as a ``canard'', the allegations that senior ministers in the Union Cabinet were working at cross purposes during the talks between Gen. Musharraf and Mr. Vajpayee. He also dismissed the accusation that India was not fully prepared for summit-level talks with Pakistan, and that the invitation to Gen. Musharraf was ``premature''.

Responding to a question whether India believed it could do business with Gen. Musharraf, whose perceptions differed so widely from those of India, Mr. Singh said India would have to deal with the ``world as it is'' and not on how ``it ought to be''.

Mr. Singh declared that India will ``fully implement'' all the unilateral good-will measures announced by the Government before Gen. Musharraf arrived here last Saturday. ``When put in place,'' Mr. Singh added, `they will make an important contribution to our relations''.

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