Will Vajpayee’s Gambit Pay Off?

At a cabinet meeting last week, Atal Behari Vajpayee, India's 78-year-old prime minister, found himself outnumbered. Both L. K. Advani, his hawkish deputy, and Yashwant Sinha, the foreign minister, opposed his plan to make peaceful overtures towards Pakistan.

The following day Mr Vajpayee stunned his colleagues by going ahead anyway. Departing from a prepared statement, he announced in parliament that he was embarking on a "decisive" effort to reach a settlement with India's neighbour. "I have taken on a big responsibility," Mr Vajpayee declared. "I am in the dock before my colleagues."

Mr Vajpayee's initiative - possibly the biggest gamble in his 50-year career - represents the best prospect for dialogue between India and Pakistan since July 2001, when a summit in Agra collapsed amid acrimony. An earlier effort, in Lahore in 1999, also failed. Mr Vajpayee, still India's most persuasive Hindi-language orator, remains the only figure capable of taking 1bn sceptical compatriots along with him. And with national elections next year, he knows that this is his last throw of the dice.

"This will be my third and final effort," Mr Vajpayee told parliament. "I know that some people say 'This fellow is a poet [Mr Vajpayee has published several books of his own poetry].' But sometimes a poet can do what others cannot."

Even so, it will require a Herculean effort. Twice last year India and Pakistan came to the brink of war; only frantic diplomacy by the US and Britain managed to avert what would have been the world's first overt military conflict between nuclear-armed powers.

The crisis had intensified since January 2002 when India mobilised its 1m-strong military following a terrorist suicide attack, allegedly backed by Pakistan, on its parliament. In October India demobilised its army, even though Pakistan had failed to honour a pledge - extracted by the US - to put an end to terrorist infiltration of the disputed province of Kashmir.

The situation in Kashmir remains as bad as ever, with a spate of terrorist attacks on civilians over the past three months (see right). "Pakistan continues to use armed militants as a tool of its foreign policy at the expense of Indian lives," says an Indian diplomat. "Until it ceases to do so, there is no prospect of serious progress."

But Mr Vajpayee, whose initiative has transformed the public mood from anguish to sudden optimism, is no reckless gambler. "Vajpayee is India's shrewdest politician," says I. K. Gujral, his predecessor as prime minister and a strong opponent of the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. "This is a calculated initiative which he has thought through."

There are two reasons to believe that Mr Vajpayee's move may be more than the romantic caprice of an ageing statesman (a doubt regularly voiced by hardline Hindu nationalists). First, the successful US-led invasion of Iraq has disturbed long-established world views in India and Pakistan. Both countries have expressed alarm about what they see as the unpredictable nature of the Bush administration. Both countries are fearful of what the US "neo-conservatives" plan to do next.

The US still describes Pakistan as a critical ally in its hunt for al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan's border provinces. But some in the Bush administration openly wonder whether the US should continue to tolerate Pakistan's sponsorship of Kashmiri separatist groups, some of which are Islamist and have connections to al-Qaeda. Many in Washington sense that Pakistan's usefulness as an ally in the war on terrorism is waning. There is a limit to the number of al-Qaeda operatives that Pakistan is able, or willing, to arrest and hand over to the US.

"India knows that the 'neo-cons' are much more impatient with Pakistan's Jehadi groups [Islamist fighters] than the more traditional diplomats in the US state department," says Prem Shanker Jha, a leading Indian commentator. "India may disapprove of a uni- lateralist and unpredictable America. But it could work in our favour."

That view finds an echo in the least likely quarters in Pakistan. Last week Qazi Hussain, leader of the Jamaat Islami, Pakistan's second largest Islamist party with close ties to Kashmiri separatist groups, implied that the real threat to Pakistan came from the US, not India. "It is better to make peace with India than to submit to American bondage," Mr Hussain said.

Second, Indian decision-makers are coming to the view that little or nothing would be gained by a military strike on Pakistan. Apart from the risks that any attack would provoke nuclear escalation - a line that General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's military ruler, does little to discourage - it would be futile in strategic terms. The militants' makeshift camps on Pakistan's side of the "line of control" that divides Kashmir are hard to pinpoint. Threat of military action last year failed to persuade Pakistan to close them down. And the two militant groups that Gen Musharraf felt compelled to ban 18 months ago are operating openly under new names.

"India has been unable to change Pakistan by force or by threat of force," says Stephen Cohen, a south Asia expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "Both strategies have failed. Mr Vajpayee recognises that diplomacy has to be tried again, however galling."

Yet, while diplomacy may be the only option, it is hardly going to be easy. India's and Pakistan's differences over Kashmir remain as firmly entrenched as ever. India maintains that cross- border terrorism must cease before high-level talks can take place. And it says that Kashmir, its only Muslim majority province, is an integral part of India.

Pakistan insists that Kashmir, which it claims has been illegally occupied by India since partition in 1947, is the central cause of poor relations between the two neighbours. The implication is that cross-border terrorism will continue while the Kashmir issue remains unresolved.

"The Kashmir militant groups are Pakistan's only real leverage," says Khalid Mahmoud, a Pakistan analyst. "It is hard to believe that the Pakistani army and the ISI [its intelligence agency] will abandon the militant groups before the Kashmir dispute has been addressed."

In addition, India is likely to remain steadfast in its rejection of any formal third-party mediation. Pakistan, while it would welcome more economic aid from the US, has also conspicuously toned down its insistence on "internationalising" the Kashmir dispute. "Third-party involvement could be double-edged," says an adviser to Gen Musharraf. "There is doubt about America's long-term policy towards Pakistan. In contrast, it seems to have a noticeably friendly long-term view of India."

To break the deadlock, therefore, will require imagination and fresh thinking. There is some hope that Richard Armitage, the US deputy secretary of state, who yesterday met Gen Musharraf in Islamabad and will meet Mr Vajpayee in New Delhi tomorrow, will bring outside inspiration.

Pakistan appears to have no new ideas. This week Gen Musharraf revived a suggestion that India and Pakistan agree to "denuclearise" and sign up to a "no-war pact" - proposals dismissed by India as gimmicks. "Does Gen Musharraf's definition of a no-war pact extend to 'proxy-war' by terrorist groups in Kashmir?" asks one official. "I don't think so. In which case it is mischievous."

That leaves Mr Vajpayee. Mindful that there was no preparation before the Agra summit in 2001, he now wants progress at junior diplomatic levels before any meeting with Gen Musharraf. The two countries have tried incremental, step-by-step diplomacy before. But it appears to make particular sense in the present environment of mistrust. Officials say this was why Mr Vajpayee this week politely declined an invitation to meet Zafarullah Khan Jamali, Pakistan's civilian prime minister.

"Mr Vajpayee is right not to raise expectations by staging a big showy summit at the start," says Mr Gujral. "Relations between India and Pakistan are prone to violent mood swings. If the summit failed, we would find ourselves in a much more war-like situation than if it had never been tried."

Apparently drawing on peace processes in Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka, Mr Vajpayee's strategy is to "normalise" relations with Pakistan by taking simple steps on which both can agree while avoiding discussion about either Kashmir or cross-border terrorism until much later on. He has suggested re-establishing "people-to-people" contacts, including easing visa applications, which have almost ceased entirely, and resuming sporting ties, which India has blocked for the past four years. India also wants Pakistan to reciprocate most favoured nation status for its exports. Illegal trade between India and Pakistan is at least five times the paltry $200m in official annual flows.

There are some signs that Pakistan will play along. This week Islamabad said it would reciprocate Mr Vajpayee's offer to restore full diplomatic relations and direct flights between the two countries, both severed by India 18 months ago. Mr Jamali also hints that Pakistan might be prepared to hold talks on military confidence-building measures to limit the scope for accidental or unauthorised use of nuclear weapons. The lack of such restraints remains a source of anxiety in the US and elsewhere.

"There is a visceral distrust between India and Pakistan which would make it futile for a summit to take place at the moment," says one western ambassador. "It is important that they build up trust by co-operating in other areas, even if they seem trivial."

Even so, many in Pakistan dislike the idea of even these limited measures. Officials in Islamabad say that the party with the biggest interest in maintaining the status quo is always the loudest cheerleader for "normalisation". India, which already possesses most of Kashmir, clearly fits that description. For Pakistan, normality before substantive talks looks more like a threat. "India has an incentive to focus on process rather than outcome because it already has Kashmir," says one Pakistani official. "Obviously, we want to improve the atmosphere. But we will want to focus on the outcome at an early stage."

Barring a large-scale terrorist attack, which could still derail Mr Vajpayee's efforts, the two countries are likely to pursue their tentative rapprochement. Flights will probably resume before the end of the month. There may even be a goodwill cricket test match.

At some stage, however, Mr Vajpayee and Gen Musharraf will have to talk face to face. Having met and disagreed before, they should at least know the obvious pitfalls to avoid. "This is the most propitious moment in years to settle the Indo-Pakistan problem," says Mr Jha. "That may not be to claim a great deal. But it is a genuine opportunity."