By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI, Aug 29 2003 (IPS)

The ‘hand-of-peace’ that Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee extended to neighbouring Pakistan in April seemed hesitant on Friday as a consequence of Monday’s twin blasts in the western port city of Mumbai and a spurt in militant violence in disputed Kashmir.

At a televised press conference in Jammu city at the close of an eventful two-day visit to Indian-controlled Kashmir, Vajpayee admitted that the situation was ”not conducive” for resumption of a dialogue with Pakistan, with which India had nearly gone to war with Pakistan to war last year after an attempt, blamed on groups with links to Pakistan, to blow up India’s Parliament.

It was during his last visit to Kashmir in April that Vajpayee made the third – and what he called last – attempt at peace with Pakistan. Ties with Islamabad have gone from bad to worse over Kashmir ever since Vajpayee took office at the head of a pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led coalition government in February 1998.

”Terrorist violence is going on. People are being killed. There is violence along the border. Then, how can meaningful talks take place?" Vajpayee said speaking in English and Hindi.

Soon after the Mumbai blasts, Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani reiterated a demand that Pakistan hand over 19 persons, some of them members of underworld gangs that operate out of both countries and suspected of having a hand in the bombings.

Pakistan denied having any role in the blasts and an official spokesman condemned them. Vajpayee and Advani were careful not to make any direct accusations aimed at Islamabad, mindful that it could adversely affect the peace initiative.

Vajpayee’s sudden change of mood on Friday threw a long shadow on a thaw in relations that had been underway between the two countries since April.

Over the last four months, road links between India and Pakistan were restored, allowing freer travel between the two countries.

Another setback was the failure of two-day talks in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi on Wednesday and Thursday to extend resumed these travel links to overflights by civilian aircraft, suspended after the Dec. 13, 2001 attack on Indian Parliament.

The failure could also have been because of Monday’s car-bomb blasts in Mumbai, which left 56 people dead and 150 others maimed.

The talks failed after Pakistan insisted on guarantees that India would not resort to a unilateral ban on civilian overflights, as it did during a war between the two countries in 1971 and after the 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament.

The Indian side was not prepared to make any such guarantee, officials here said.

Also on Thursday, while Vajpayee and Advani were in Srinagar for a meeting of the federal Inter-state Council, attended by chief ministers from Indian states, security forces had to use mortars to eliminate two armed militants who had taken several persons hostage in a downtown hotel.

The five-storey ‘Greenway Hotel’, barely three kilometres away from the site of the conference, was gutted in the action. It also left the militants, said to be members of the Pakistan-based Laskar-e-Toiba (Soldiers of God) and their hostages, who included former state legislator Javed Shah and his bodyguard, dead.

”Whatever happened yesterday clearly shows that the situation is not normal. How can talks take place without normalcy,” Vajpayee said, referring to a firefight which was telecast by the crews of several television channels covering Vajpayee’s visit to Kashmir.

”We would like to have meaningful talks with Pakistan. But, if terrorist activities continue, that will not be possible,” Vajpayee said, reiterating India’s position that dialogue would not resume as long as infiltration continues across the Line of Control (LoC) that separates the Indian and Pakistan controlled parts of Kashmir. Referring to an offer by Pakistan President Gen Pervez Musharraf for a cessation of the artillery and small-arms fire along the Line of Control, Vajpayee said he did not understand what the president meant. ”If they stop firing there will be a ceasefire -there is no violence from our side.”

Strategic analyst and former army general V R Raghavan had then commented that it was not in Pakistan’s interest to keep the Line of Control dormant. ”They think that a dead issue would not form the basis for a solution and so they keep it on the boil.”

Vajpayee, though still sounding hopeful for resumption of dialogue, seemed to indicate that India was in no particular hurry. ”It is a slow process and we would like to go step by step – in so many years the Kashmir problem could not be resolved. How can it happen instantly?”

Though generally regarded as a man of peace, Vajpayee’s assumption of office in February 1998 was followed by the tit-for-tat nuclear blasts carried out in May that year by India and Pakistan.

A year later, in February 1999, Vajpayee symbolically crossed the border in a bus and went on to the Pakistani city of Lahore to sign a peace declaration with then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, binding the two countries to a dialogue process to settle all outstanding issues including Kashmir.

But the goodwill generated by the visit was shortlived and by April that year, Vajpayee ordered the Indian army to dislodge heavily armed intruders backed by the Pakistan army from positions they had occupied kilometres within the Indian part of Kashmir at Kargil.

The war ended after then U.S. President Bill Clinton prevailed on Nawaz Sharif to withdraw the intrusion. But Sharif was ousted by in a coup by Musharraf in October 1999 and the general made no bones about his opposition to the Lahore Declaration or of the July 1972 Simla Accord between the two countries.

In spite of Musharraf’s known role as the man behind the Kargil intrusions, Vajpayee surprised observers by inviting the general to India for a summit in July 2001. The summit failed over Kashmir.

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