India and Pakistan ready for talks

By John Chalmers

NEW DELHI (Reuters): India and Pakistan look set to hold their first summit in more than two years by mid-July, but given their entrenched positions on the Kashmir dispute it is not clear where they will start.

The current affairs magazine India Today asked the same question in a cover story on last week's policy somersault by New Delhi, which ditched its condition that Islamabad must first stop backing guerrillas in Indian Kashmir before any talks.

The weekly reminded its readers of a comment Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had made just last September.

"Everyone is telling me that I should talk to Musharraf," he said. "... what will we talk about? Will I say 'How's the weather?' or will I ask, 'How are your wife and children?'"

That has apparently been forgotten, and the language from both leaders is suddenly both cordial and eloquent.

Vajpayee invited Gen. Pervez Musharraf to New Delhi to "walk the high road" to peace, and Pakistan's chief executive responded by praising the Indian prime minister for his statesmanship, vision, courage and boldness.

But behind the rhetoric, there is no sign that either side is prepared to give any ground on Kashmir, the trigger for two of their three wars since 1947.

Indian External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh told a news conference on Monday that Jammu and Kashmir remained an integral part of India and the decade-old rebellion against its rule there was a domestic matter.

He roundly rejected Islamabad's demand for the implementation of a 1948 UN resolution which called for a plebiscite to determine whether Kashmir should be folded into Pakistan or India.

Musharraf has accepted India's stand that Kashmir should be just one of several bilateral issues on the summit agenda.

But in New Delhi, Pakistan's ambassador has been harping on the need for a referendum of the Kashmiri people.

He has challenged India's refusal to consider a three-way dialogue process which would include Kashmiri separatists and has also challenged its refusal to accept third-party mediation.

"There's a risk with megaphone diplomacy," said a Western diplomat in New Delhi. "If they carry on like this whatever limited room for maneuver they had will be reduced by the time the summit comes."

He said the meeting would be an exercise in atmospherics -- in itself important given the frosty relations between two nuclear- capable neighbors.

However, it would focus only on possible confidence-building measures and a framework for future diplomat-level talks on the nuts and bolts of the Kashmir dispute.

Brahma Chellaney of the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi said that, in theory, the setting for the Vajpayee- Musharraf talks could not be better.

"The anti-India Pakistan military and the anti-Pakistan Hindu nationalists are in power in Islamabad and New Delhi. Only they can sell a peace deal to their respective nations," he wrote in a newspaper column.

"In reality, however, neither leader has the political room for reaching any bold compromise."

Chellaney said Musharraf, constantly looking over his shoulder at the other generals in his junta, has a tenuous hold on power and Vajpayee's political strength has been sapped by challenges from within his own ruling coalition.

Analysts said that if the two leaders do manage to kickstart dialogue again, it is hard to see how they can go forward in search of a solution for Kashmir.

India controls about 45 percent of the territory comprising the regions of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh. Pakistan holds just over a third of the territory and China controls the remainder.

A cease-fire line, known as the Line of Control (LoC), was drawn across Kashmir in 1972 after the last full-scale conflict between India and Pakistan.

Among the various "solutions" mooted for Kashmir by observers was to turn the LoC into an international border.

Analysts said even if New Delhi gave up its official claim to Pakistan-held Kashmir, this would not be enough for Islamabad -- or indeed for the Pakistan-based Islamic militants fighting Indian rule in Kashmir.

Some observers have also suggested an "LoC-plus" deal, which would mean ceding much of the Kashmir Valley to Pakistan.

Then there is a proposal to allow people-to-people contact across the LoC, reopen the highway linking the two sides and making the whole territory more autonomous from Islamabad and New Delhi.

Supporters of this "soft border" solution say it would allow Kashmir's final status to emerge naturally with time.

The Western diplomat said it was very clear that Vajpayee, who had been pushing his colleagues for months to give up the no- talks policy, was determined to reach some settlement.

"But he won't be able to talk about details of such a settlement," he said. "We are months, years away from that."