POLITICS-SOUTH ASIA: New Twists to Indo-Pakistani Relations

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 24 1998 (IPS) - Pakistan’s provisional acceptance of a nuclear test ban and a series of agreements between the Indian and Pakistani prime ministers have altered South Asia’s political landscape after months of rising tension.

Expectations had been low for the meeting between Pakistan’s Mohammed Nawaz Sharif and India’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee, which took place Wednesday at the New York Palace hotel where both were staying this week.

Nuclear tests by India and Pakistan in May and their bitter dispute over Kashmir – the border region claimed by both – stiffened by the election this year of Vaypayee’s right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition, had dampened hopes for any progress between New Delhi and Islamabad.

Yet Sharif, after months of rumours, confirmed in his Wednesday speech to the U.N. General Assembly that “Pakistan is prepared to adhere to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT)” before a conference of states party to the treaty takes place next September. The announcement is a boost for the treaty, which requires ratification by 44 specific nuclear-capable states, including India and Pakistan, before it can enter into force.

“We have declared a moratorium on further testing; so has India,” Sharif said. “There is no reason why the two countries cannot adhere to the CTBT.”

The CTBT has been signed by 150 countries, but ratified so far by only 21, with the United States – among others – unwilling to proceed with ratification while the South Asia proliferation worries last.

In a change of Pakistan’s oft-stated nuclear policy, Sharif did not require India to sign before Pakistan did so, although he noted that India would also have to sign on before the treaty could take effect.

“I warmly welcome the statement made by the prime minister of Pakistan today declaring his country’s intention of signing the CTBT,” U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan responded. He noted that once Pakistan signed, 42 of the 44 countries required to ratify the treaty would at least have signed it – leaving only India and North Korea still to do so.

Vajpayee refused to indicate whether India would now sign, arguing that, although the Indian and Pakistani governments exchanged views Wednesday on the CTBT, “both countries are taking independent decisions … No final decision has been taken (by India) as yet.”

There also remain several significant provisos in Pakistan’s acceptance of the CTBT. “Pakistan’s adherence to the treaty will take place only in conditions free from coercion or pressure,” Sharif announced. “In this regard, we expect that the arbitrary restrictions imposed on Pakistan by multilateral institutions will be speedily removed. We also expect that discriminatory sanctions against Pakistan will be lifted.”

Those conditions put some pressure on the United States, World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) to lift the sanctions imposed on Pakistan, as well as on India, after the May nuclear tests. U.S. National Security Adviser Sandy Berger said Monday after Sharif met U.S. President Bill Clinton that “we will be pleased if Pakistan signs the CTBT”, but he did not promise any explicit reward.

An IMF team, meanwhile, is in Islamabad negotiating conditions for loan disbursements to the cash-strapped government, which has seen its foreign exchange plummet since the sanctions. Sources in Washington told IPS that money from the financial insitutions for Pakistan would be approved shortly, but denied any connection to Islamabad’s CTBT acceptance and said any IMF decisions would be “apolitical”.

Nevertheless, it is no secret that both New Delhi and Islamabad have been burdened by both international criticism and significant economic pressures ever since the test explosions first raised up grim scenarios of a South Asian arms race.

Pakistan, the more vulnerable of the two economically, has since May taken pains to show, as Sharif said, that it is “not insensitive to the concerns aroused by the South Asian nuclear tests”. He pledged Wednesday that his government would commit itself to resolving all its disputes with India through dialogue.

Vajpayee, meanwhile, defied expectations that his fundamentalist party and Sharif’s rightist Muslim League uld not reporters after the two leaders met that “a new chapter in Indo-Pakistani cooperation is being opened”.

The two governments agreed to discuss a variety of outstanding conflicts in the coming months, including the disputes over Kashmir and the Siachen glacier, measures for economic and commercial cooperation and against terrorism and drug trafficking and a water project at Wullar Barrage.

The first of the talks, including peace and security issues and Kashmir, will begin on Oct. 15 in Islamabad between Pakistani Foreign Secretary Shamshad Ahmed and Indian Foreign Secretary Shri K. Raghunath. Further rounds are scheduled for New Delhi in November.

Vajpayee announced several other minor improvements in bilateral relations, including some expanded commercial ties between the two nations, a direct bus link between Lahore and New Delhi and a relaxation of visa restrictions. The two sides also agreed to clamp down on exchanges of fire across the line of control between Indian-occupied and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and on hostile propaganda by state-run media outlets.

“We are quite serious,” Vajpayee said. “A beginning has to be made” in improving ties, he added.

The two governments, however, are not especially well-equipped to be the ones to deliver any real thaw. Sharif held similar peace talks last year with Vajpayee’s predecessor, Inder Kumar Gujral of the leftist United Front, but the effort was quickly bogged down in disagreements, largely over technical details about follow-up meetings. Gujral’s coalition government fell after the Congress Party withdrew outside support for it, leading to elections won by the fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata-led coalition.

Vajpayee’s rightist coalition has been accused of stoking hostility towards religious and ethnic minorities, including Muslims, within India and its hardline policies on Kashmir have been accompanied by an increase in hostilities in the disputed territory.

Meanwhile, Sharif has in recent weeks attempted to pass through Parliament a bill allowing the government to overturn laws not deemed to be consistent with an Islamic legal code, or ‘shariah’ – a move which rights groups believe will discriminate against Pakistan’s religious minorities.