POLITICS-SOUTH ASIA: Go Beyond Diplomatese, Peace Activists Say

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Oct 31 2003 (IPS) - It comes as no surprise that India’s latest peace offensive on Pakistan has become bogged down over the disputed territory of Kashmir, but experts say it is important to see beyond the diplomatese and doggedly pursue dialogue in the interest of peace on the subcontinent.

”The positions of India and Pakistan on the Kashmir issue are so far apart that there is no possibility of coming together on it just yet. But there has been forward movement in areas that could promote people-to-people contact,” Dipankar Banerjee, former Indian army general, told IPS in an interview.

Analysing a week of tit-for-tat diplomacy between the two countries, Banerjee, director of the independent, Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS), said it was important for both countries to seize on areas of agreement and continue to engage with each other. ”India has to take the 12-point package it offered Pakistan as far as it will go and ignore mischievous suggestions made by Pakistan,” said Banerjee, referring to suggestions from Islamabad that it was ready to provide scholarships to people living in the Indian side of divided Kashmir and support for rape victims and widows of those who died in the violent conflict over possession of the territory.

That suggestion elicited an unusually sharp response from India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), which at a Thursday briefing accused Pakistan of imposing ”impractical, extraneous and delaying” conditions to its 12-point peace initiative announced on Oct 22.

Salient features of the confidence-building measures (CBMs) include increased travel facilities over land, sea and air between the two countries, coast guard cooperation, and increases in the size of diplomatic missions and in sports and cultural contacts.

New Delhi’s disappointment and annoyance with Islamabad’s response to its peace initiative was palpable in the external affairs spokesman Navtej Sarna’s terse statement that the only hindrance to the final settlement of the Kashmir ”is the illegal occupation (by Pakistan) of a portion of the state”.

While the Indian government is committed, through a 1994 parliamentary resolution, to reclaim the whole of Kashmir state, there is a general understanding that a permanent settlement could come through the conversion of the Line of Control (LOC) a ceasefire line that has existed for more than half a century, into the international border between India and Pakistan.

Sarna said selective offers of scholarships and support to people in one particular region of India would not help improve relationships between the two countries.

”India has never adopted a selective approach to people in Balochistan, Sindh, or the North West Frontier Province,” he said, pointedly referring to troubled areas within Pakistan.

But Sarna admitted to a ”limited positive response” from Pakistan and gave ground for belief that Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s peace initiative, announced on Apr. 18 in Srinagar, was slowly gathering momentum.

Based on Pakistan’s response to India’s 12-point offer, the foreign ministry has announced the immediate implementation of a proposal to allow senior citizens to walk across the border checkpost at Wagah, which links the Indian city of Amritsar with the Pakistani city of Lahore.

The big disappointment for India appeared to be the rejection of a proposal that would allow people in Srinagar, capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir, to travel with ordinary passports across the Line of Control to Muzzaffarabad, capital of what is known in Indian as Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) and in Pakistan Azad (free) Kashmir.

Reopening what was once called the Rawalpindi Road has enormous support from political parties in Srinagar that advocate a Kashmir that is independent of both India and Pakistan and also pro-India parties. The proposal is also popular with ordinary people who must now travel great distances to meet relations on either side of the Line of Control.

Islamabad’s condition that those traveling across the Line of Control must carry passports issued by the United Nations was rejected outright as impractical by Sarna. Banerjee for his part called it mischievous.

Sarna said that India’s offer was motivated by humanitarian considerations and suggested that Islamabad’s proposal for border checkposts on the Line of Control to be manned by the United Nations was an attempt to ”politicise and disrupt this by attaching conditions they knew would not be acceptable”.

Pakistan has also turned down proposals for more buses on the existing Delhi-Lahore route, and the reopening of road and rail links between cities in the two countries.

Banerjee said the refusal to improve travel links and the insistence that they be part of a ‘composite dialogue’ instead that includes Kashmir only ”showed up Pakistan’s limitations”, but that it was for New Delhi to work around these.

”What is important it to keep up the momentum between now and the January summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in Islamabad, which Vajpayee is committed to attend,” Banerjee said.

In Pakistan, there is a view among the hawks that Islamabad’s acceptance of the normalisation of relations with India sans Kashmir would be to compromise on an issue that has kept the two countries at the loggerheads for the last 56 years.

”If Pakistan accepts the Indian proposals, it will be like freezing the Kashmir issue, essentially what India had been wanting for years,” said a key leader of the Jamaat-i-Islami party, who did not want to be identified on the ground that his party was yet to formalise its response to the confidence-building measures.

But peace activists in Pakistan have suggested that the two governments should indeed freeze the Kashmir and other thorny issues because they do not have the capacity to resolve them as yet.

”The atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust must end first,” said Afrasiyab Khattak, former chairman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. He is urging Pakistan and India to build up confidence so that they can eventually resolve the sticky issues.

Major political parties have welcomed the latest Indian proposals. ”It is an important step and we will watch with great interest the progress made in this regard,” said Farhatullah Babar of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).

Babar said that his party has always maintained that while the two countries stick to their respective stands on the Kashmir issue, they still can make progress for the normalisation of relations in other areas. ”This is an opportunity that the government of Pakistan should exploit with great interest and caution,” he said.

The Indian confidence-building measures were hailed even by people like retired Air Marshall Asghar Khan, who is known for his role in 1965 war with India.

”It is a step towards easing the prevailing tensions between the two nuclear foes in South Asia,” said Khan, who now heads the Qaumi Jamhoori Party (National Democratic Party).