En-Trenched Positions

Given India's searing experience of UN intermediation in the Kashmir dispute in the 24 years from independence to the Bangladesh war, it's not surprising its policymakers have an allergic reaction to the merest hint of a third-party role in the resolution of the dispute today. That accounts for A.B. Vajpayee's dismissal of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's attempt to involve the US. But Vajpayee and policymakers in the external affairs ministry don't have any reason to be distrustful of the US' response to Musharraf. While saying the US would continue to press India and Pakistan to engage in a dialogue on this issue, President George W. Bush ruled out any direct American role in the resolution of the dispute.

On no fewer than three occasions during his joint press conference with Musharraf, Bush asked Pakistan and India to engage in a 'serious, meaningful and real' dialogue on the issue. The qualification is all-important, for it means the dialogue must confine the search for a solution within the limits of what is possible. Since India and Pakistan have different ideas of what is possible, this means the dialogue must occur within the confines of previously-agreed positions and commitments. On Kashmir, there are only two: the Instrument of Accession, coupled with Nehru's promise to hold a plebiscite, of August 13, 1948, and the Simla Agreement of July 2, 1972.

Pakistan has always maintained a solution must be based on the implementation of the 1948 resolution. But even in 1948 the British found, as they wrestled with the details while attempting to persuade the Security Council to ignore India's complaint of aggression and heed only Pakistan's demand to spell out the conditions for a plebiscite, that the actual implementation of this simple panacea bristled with problems: would it be based on existing electoral rolls, which covered 6 per cent of the population of the old princely state? Would refugees be excluded and immigrants included and how? Given that neither side trusted the other, who would administer the plebiscite and who would maintain law and order in the interim?

Today, when a de facto boundary has been in existence for 55 years; when there is or has been universal franchise in both countries; when migrants from the two parts of Kashmir have spread out throughout not only Pakistan and India but the rest of the world to the point where there are more people from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) in the West than in PoK itself; when Pakistan has ceded bits of the northern territories to China; when the requirement that it pull all Pakistani soldiers and other nationals out of PoK has lost all meaning; and, above all, when Pakistan is in no mood to vacate PoK before a plebiscite is held, the UN resolutions have lost their relevance. This is all the more so since they gave the Kashmiris only two choices—Pakistan or India, and not the third, independence or autonomy.

This leaves only one feasible point of departure—the Simla Agreement. This is a bilateral treaty signed long after the acceptance of the UN resolution and therefore must take precedence in international law over it. No Pakistani government, including that of Musharraf, has formally repudiated it, though the latter has made it abundantly clear he would dearly like to. The US has endorsed this not once but a score of times. The present formulation by Bush fails to make an explicit reference to it but the terms 'meaningful', 'serious' and 'real' amount to virtually the same thing.

This becomes clear if one understands what the goals of US policy in this region are. Apart from averting a nuclear war, in which it has already been successful, the US wants to anchor Pakistan firmly to modernity and rationalism. To do this, it needs to shore up Musharraf and the Pakistan economy.Its purpose in doing so is to retain a crucial base against terrorism and to open a way to Central Asia. But it knows that none of this is possible if Pakistan simply turns its assistance into a tool for renewed jehad in Kashmir. Thus, Pakistan's nexus with terrorism in Kashmir has to be broken first. That can only happen if it sheds unattainable and unreal ambitions in Kashmir and opts for achievable goals.

If India insists that the Simla Agreement must be the starting point for a future dialogue, it is difficult to see how the US would find that less than satisfactory. The only important difference is that it no longer rules out, even by implication, the possibility that India and Pakistan may find a third basis for the resolution of the dispute. The onus for persuading India to accept a third framework for resolution will, however, rest on Pakistan.

So far, India has insisted Musharraf give credible proof that he has stopped cross-border terrorist attacks, before it will do so. In recent weeks New Delhi has also tacitly added a second condition: that the 22 terrorists, or at least the Indian nationals among them, be extradited (or deported) to India first. Musharraf may well be doing the first but proof on the ground will only emerge after the snows melt. Thus insistence on this condition will push any resumption of a dialogue back into early summer. As for the second requirement, Delhi is entirely justified in pressing Pakistan but since Musharraf cannot afford to be humiliated yet again, he is unlikely to agree to it. This too should not become a roadblock to a 'serious and meaningful dialogue'.

New Delhi would therefore do well to shed its defensive posture and spell out its conditions for resuming the dialogue with Pakistan. But it must make it clear that the dialogue will not be about troop pullouts but about Kashmir and other key issues such as the expatriation of the 22 terrorists wanted by India. The dialogue will be held without surrendering the right to hit back if cross-border attacks continue. This means that Musharraf must be prepared for talks while the troops remain on the border.