The Areas Of Agreement

In Agra, the Pakistan President, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, and the Indian PrimeMinister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, can agree on many issues that would buildmutual trust, which is much-needed given the dismal relationship between the twocountries. They need only keep the promises they and their predecessors havemade. If implemented and built upon in good faith, these earlier commitmentscould help greatly in overcoming the obstacles on the path to peace.

The natural place to start is the February 1999 Lahore summit. The LahoreDeclaration by the Prime Ministers, Mr. Nawaz Sharif and Mr. Vajpayee,recognised the grave dangers created by the nuclear weapons of both countriesand the importance of avoiding conflict which could spiral into war and possiblynuclear war.

The gravity of the issue was clear from that fact that five out of the eightpoints under the Memorandum of Understanding signed by the Foreign Secretaries,Mr. K. Raghunath and Mr. Shamshad Ahmad, during the Lahore visit dealt withnuclear weapons related questions. The two sides agreed to try to reduce therisk of accidental or unauthorised use of nuclear weapons. They have donenothing about this since. What we need now are specific treaties.

India and Pakistan have not yet deployed the nuclear weapons they tested in1998. Deployment would mean that the warning time for nuclear attack would bereduced to the few minutes it would take for the short and intermediate rangeballistic missiles they have to reach the other side. Aircraft would take only alittle longer to deliver a nuclear weapon from a base in one country to thecapital of the other.

Deployment also increases the risk of a catastrophic accident involving anaircraft or missile carrying a nuclear weapon. It is in the interest of bothcountries to formally agree to keep their nuclear weapons undeployed, forexample by keeping the bombs away from aircraft or missiles, by a distancegreater than about 50 km. This will ensure sufficient time for mutualconsultation to avoid any hasty or jittery response.

Even under an agreement to not deploy nuclear weapons, there is still a riskof accidents or unauthorised use of nuclear weapons. There are reports of atleast 230 nuclear weapons accidents involving the U.S., the USSR, and the U.K.between 1950 and 1980, with many more near misses.

The two countries should agree to immediately notify each other in the eventof an accidental, unauthorised or any other unexplained incident involving apossible detonation of one of their nuclear weapons so as to reduce thepossibility of misinterpretation by the other country. This could be done ifboth countries set up Nuclear Risk Reduction Centres with direct, high- speedcommunication links between them.

Regular meetings between representatives of these two centres could takeplace and the training of staff jointly and co-operatively carried out. Justsetting up such a centre with joint training on how to manage nuclearemergencies would be a significant confidence building measure.

At Lahore, India and Pakistan agreed to keep each other informed of anyballistic missile flight tests and to work towards a treaty formalising this.Since then, they have notified each other of their missile launches but not madeany progress on a treaty. They should do so urgently.

There is a simple model available in the 1988 Ballistic Missile LaunchNotification Agreement between the United States and Soviet Union. Due to thepossibility of a misinterpretation, especially given their limited surveillancecapabilities, India and Pakistan could go beyond the old super power agreementand usefully add a requirement to provide information on space launches.

Since the 1998 nuclear tests, the two countries have maintained unilateralmoratoria on further nuclear tests. Both leaders have also committed in variousways to signing the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. They should come outfrom the pretence of the need for a "national consensus''; this constrainthas never been applied to any other policy.

In Agra, the two leaders should agree formally to the CTBT. We have alreadyhad too many nuclear tests - even a single test was one too many. The twocountries should show that they have no intention to ever resume testing byclosing down their test sites, banning subcritical and hydrodynamic tests andresearch into new kinds of nuclear weapons.

The Lahore declaration also stresses the need for the resolution of alloutstanding issues to ensure an environment of peace and security. High on thepriority list should be a resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir question, inaccordance with the wishes of the local people.

As a first step, India and Pakistan can agree to withdraw their militaryforces from Siachen Glacier and declare it a de-militarised zone. They almostmanaged this in November 1992, when an agreement on Siachen was said to havebeen reached that envisaged "mutual withdrawal of troops from newpositions, the creation of a ``zone of complete disengagement'' and thedelineation of a ``zone of peace and tranquillity''. The process broke downbefore a formal treaty could be agreed to.

For decades, India and Pakistan have played a game with the no- war pact. In1949 and 1950 India offered first a no-war declaration and then a no-war pact toPakistan, the offer was accepted by Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan providedthere was a timetable for settling all outstanding disputes.

More recently, in 1981, General Zia offered a no-war pact to India, which wasrefused. Indira Gandhi subsequently declared that even without a no-war pact,India would not attack Pakistan first. Gen. Musharraf repeated the offer at theUnited Nations Millennium Summit in September 2000.

When India made the offer, Pakistan refused because it believed that untilthe Kashmir issue was resolved, a war with India could not be ruled out. WhenPakistan offers, India spurns it believing it would permit Pakistan's continuedsupport of cross-border militancy in Kashmir but forbid any possible Indianpunitive incursion across the border.

A way out is for both sides to agree to never wage war against the other,and define acts that would violate this pact. For instance, a no-war pact couldforbid, among other things, military incursions across the border, support forcross-border militancy, sabotage, blockades, and disruption of river waters. Itcould also establish an Adjudication Commission, whose ruling would be binding,for settling disputes over actions that one side may consider violations of theno-war pact.

There is mistrust among our people too, much of it the result of governmentpropaganda over decades. To develop a new basis for living together as goodneighbours, the people of India and Pakistan need to meet and get to know eachother again. They must be able to travel far more freely to each other'scountry.

In 1982, India and Pakistan agreed to establish a Joint Commission to "strengthenunderstanding and to promote co-operation between the two countries for mutualbenefit in economic, trade, industrial, education, health, cultural, consular,tourism, travel, information, scientific and technological fields''. Nothingcame of it.

Then, in 1998, there was an Agreement on Cultural Co-operation to "encourageand facilitate exchange in the field of art, culture and mass media... toprovide facilities and scholarships to students and research scholars...facilitate exchange of artists, poets writers and musicians... visits of sportsteams''. Again, nothing has come of it. These agreements must be activated andimplemented creatively and with determination.

But to make these work will require a lifting of the painful visa and travelrestrictions that India and Pakistan impose on each other's citizens. What isneeded at Agra is an agreement to open visa offices in many cities in bothcountries and a decision to grant visas at the port of entry for accreditedjournalists, teachers, students, artists and sports- persons and seniorcitizens.

Both countries now agree they need peace badly. We have suggested what ispossible at Agra. The treaties themselves are not hard to write. It is time totake at least the first step.

(Zia Mian and M. V. Ramana are at Princeton University, U.S., A. H. Nayyar isat Quaid-i-Azam University, Pakistan, and Sandeep Pandey is with Asha, India.)