An avoidable pause

Pakistan's chief executive Gen. Pervez Musharraf, may have chosen a diplomatically contentious occasion to call upon the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, to act in a statesmanlike manner so as to avoid a reversal of the recent positive trends on the bilateral front. Surely, the military ruler's direct appeal to Mr. Vajpayee punctuated the former's impassioned exposition of Pakistan's support for the idea of self-determination in respect of Jammu and Kashmir. The dramatic timing was also determined by Islamabad's traditional observance of a day of solidarity' with the Muslim-majority population of the Indian border state.

Given this milieu of deep emotions across the India-Pakistan divide, it will be easy for New Delhi to take a cynically dim view of what it might tend to regard as a trite Musharraf-speak. However, the Vajpayee administration should guard against the dangers of a new lurch to an old policy of drift in the bilateral sphere.

It will be naive to read any fortified intransigence in Gen. Musharraf's latest comment about his country's inclination to support Kashmir's Muslims at all times and under all circumstances. He has said this in the overall context of Pakistan's well-known proclamatory fraternity with these people, and the prefatory remark was also categorical about the primacy of the present critical juncture.

By the same logic of caution, New Delhi's policy planners need not assess whether the parallel absence of some familiar rhetoric regarding a holy war is indicative of a new shift in Pakistan's larger perception of the Kashmir issue. Really relevant to the furtherance of India's national interest at this stage is Islamabad's latest theme that the bilateral peace process, such as it exists, might only be weakened by any delay in resolving the question whether and, if so, who among the leaders of the All-Party Hurriyat Conference could be allowed by New Delhi to travel to Pakistan.

This will have a psychological bearing on the momentum of hopes generated by India's original announcement of the ceasefire in Jammu and Kashmir last November and by Pakistan's statements regarding restraint and a partial troop pull-out along the Line of Control. If the APHC issue is resolved to mutual satisfaction, the onus for a peace process will rest more squarely on both sides.

-- The Hindu, New Delhi