POLITICS-SOUTH ASIA: Annan’s Visit Makes Little Headway on Kashmir

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Mar 19 2001 (IPS) - U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan’s just- finished tour of South Asia has once again brought out India’s reluctance to open dialogue on disputed Kashmir with Pakistan’s military ruler Pervez Musharraf.

At the close last week of Annan’s week-long tour, India had not budged from its position that the key to a solution of the Kashmir issue lay in bilateral dialogue, but that such a dialogue must be preceded by a cessation of alleged support for cross-border terrorism by Pakistan.

In Pakistan, where he began his four-nation tour on Mar. 10, Annan dismissed Islamabad’s requests that the United Nations intervene in the conflict. He told officials it was not possible to do so unless India agrees.

Annan said the key to peace in Kashmir lay not in unenforceable U.N. resolutions dating back to 1948, but through bilateral agreements such as the 1972 Shimla Accord and the Lahore Declaration signed in February 1999.

The 1972 Shimla Accord between the two countries drew up the Line of Control, which runs through the Indian and Pakistan held portion of the former princely state of Kashmir. The Lahore Declaration was signed by the countries after Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee took a symbolic bus ride to the Pakistani city of Lahore to open a peace initiative with former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

Addressing a press briefing in New Delhi on Friday following a session with India’s Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh, Annan said optimistically that he remained “encouraged that both parties were open and willing to talk”.

Annan said his discussions with Musharraf in Islamabad included an early return to democracy, and he was assured that a process was already on so that a civil authority could be in place by October 2002. The United Nations, he said, would be working to accelerate the process.

“We believe that for dialogue to be successful, a conducive atmosphere for it be prepared first,” said Singh. Singh now also holds the defence portfolio, which fell vacant after Defence Minister George Fernandes resigned in the wake of an arms purchase scam that rocked the country last week.

Singh, a former officer in the Indian army, holds Musharraf responsible for an undeclared but bloody war which broke out at Kargil in 1999 on the Line-of-Control (LoC).

Although Pakistan claimed that the war was fought by Kashmiri separatist militants, it resulted in the use of heavy artillery by both sides for several months and the downing of each other’s military aircraft.

The war ended with the intervention of then U.S. President Bill Clinton, who called for a withdrawal of armed intruders from Indian territory and respect for the LoC drawn up under the 1972 Shimla Accord. Clinton also urged the two countries to resume the spirit of the Lahore Agreement, signed after Vajpayee’s symbolic bus ride to Lahore in February 1999.

But the initiative between Vajpayee and then Pakistani premier Sharif was effectively scuttled through the Kargil operation by the Pakistani army led by Musharraf, who took over the country in a coup in October 1999 and sent Sharif to jail and later to exile in Saudi Arabia.

The coup by Musharraf only made chances of resumption of diplomatic dialogue, broken by the Kargil war, more remote. Vajpayee has taken care to avoid Musharraf at international meetings attended by the two leaders.

India even vetoed plans for the last scheduled summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in December 1999 on the grounds that Pakistan, being under a military dictatorship, could not participate.

When and where the next summit will take place is to be decided in May, at the meeting of the standing committee of the SAARC, consisting of foreign secretaries.

May also happens to be when the government ceasefire in Kashmir, underway since November, is due to expire. There are fears that the future of SAARC is getting inextricably linked with the Kashmir issue.

Annan offered the United Nations’ help in resuming stalled talks on Kashmir. “This is the right time for India and Pakistan to resume dialogue,” he said. “I am ready to support the dialogue in any manner. My good offices will remain available if the parties were to engage under U.N. auspices.”

India and Pakistan have gone to war over Kashmir twice after the two countries were created after the end of British colonial rule in 1947. India holds two-thirds of the territory, while Pakistan holds another third.

In May 1998 the two countries set off a tit-for-tat series of underground nuclear tests that raised fears that the long- simmering hostility between the neighbours could escalate into a nuclear exchange.

Singh said he told Annan that an agreement already existed between the two nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours on not attacking each other’s nuclear installations, and that information was being continuously exchanged from time to time.

Singh pledged to Annan that India would not stand in the way of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which now needs endorsement from 44 potentially nuclear-capable countries, including India. More than 150 nations have already signed on to it.

POLITICS-SOUTH ASIA: Annan’s Visit Makes Little Headway on Kashmir

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Mar 19 2001 (IPS) - U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan’s just- finished tour of South Asia has once again brought out India’s reluctance to open dialogue on disputed Kashmir with Pakistan’s military ruler Pervez Musharraf.
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