The declarations over the nuclear tests made in Geneva and then in London have come but not gone. British foreign secretary Robin Cook is in hot pursuit. "It is a task that will take some time to resolve," Cook said after the G-8 meeting, like a man quite looking forward to it. To that end he is setting up a "task force" to make sure India and Pakistan don't forget the words of warning from the G-8s and the P5s of the world.
Cook spoke with apparently bland balance of both India and Pakistan. But he just can't seem to forget the criticism heaped on him during the Queen's visit to India and Pakistan last year. Even prime minister Tony Blair hadn't been too kind on him then. Cook had been accused of indulging in "clumsy diplomacy" by announcing that Kashmir is more than a bilateral issue. Forming a dark backdrop to all that is Labour's Kashmir resolution of 1995, which says Britain "must accept its responsibility as the former imperial power."
That Cook is targeting India more than Pakistan is becoming increasingly clearer. A Pakistani journalist Cook invited to speak at a meeting with the media after the London G-8 meeting asked what hope there could be from talks over Kashmir now when they haven't worked for 50 years. Cook's remark was telling. It was a "paradox," he said, that though the tests had been undertaken in the name of national security, "they (India) have brought pressure to resolve this issue in a way that would be helpful to both India and Pakistan."
There was little doubt who had first conducted the tests in the name of security, or who would be hurt more by pressure to resolve the Kashmir issue. India, Cook was saying, had asked for trouble over Kashmir. Cook sounds more than willing to oblige.
The "task force", which he announced Britain is taking the lead in assembling, includes "senior officials and experts" from the G-8 and also other countries. Cook's officials at the Foreign Office are working out who will be on this team and what it will do. The task force will, Cook said, "make sure that we continue to coordinate efforts to undo the damage that has been done." His interest in this, and his seeming energy for this "task" cannot be underestimated. The communique by the P5 at Geneva, and that issued in London by the G-8 a week later, were both drafted under Cook's supervision.The holding of the G-8 meeting only a week after the P5 meeting was also at Cook's initiative. That he secured G-8 agreement over this task force now gives him renewed licence to pile up pressure through a body that will operate under "British supervision."
The creation of the task force, the firm views he speaks of over the Kashmir issue, his repeated demand to address the "root cause" of the problems between India and Pakistan—all combine to make Kashmir more than the bilateral issue that the P5 and the G-8 formally declared it to be. Given his stated views, one was entitled perhaps to listen to what he was not saying, and which US secretary of state Madeleine Albright was, that the Kashmir issue "has to be dealt with bilaterally." That is the official position adopted by the P5 and the G-8. But Cook wants an addition—he says a third force is needed to resolve what it has had to acknowledge is a matter between two parties.
Cook has sought to claim some moral ground for this through a proposal that Britain will cut its nuclear missiles on its Trident submarines by half. Each of the three carries about 100 warheads each, and a fourth submarine is on its way. That cut, even if implemented, will reduce the number of warheads from an estimated 350 to 200. At the moment at least, one of these submarines remains patrolling on 24-hour alert. The Guardian asked in an editorial: "Just whose surprise attack is this needed to deter?" And numbers, it said, "are not the essence of the problem."
But the proposed reduction will, Indian diplomats say, be cited as a defence against the double standards argument that India carries against Britain, and seek to give some semblance of ethical backing to Cook's task force.
Cook, at one time a supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, has evidently been concerned about the double standards argument. "We are not asking India to do anything we have not done already," said Cook, and quickly added, "in international treaties." An announcement of the Trident cuts and Britain's signing of current treaties is intended to give moral backing to political pressure the new task force will bring to bear, Indian diplomats say.
There are signs, though, of some chinks in the task force. Not all G-8 ministers seem to have shared Cook's enthusiasm for keeping up such pressure, not even Albright. The task force was Cook's idea, she said after the meeting. It would, she said, "look at some technical aspects." But in one way or another, among the P5 and the G-8 it is Britain and the US that have taken the lead, and they are doing the talking for the others.
Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov had succeeded in toning down the strong draft communique drawn by Britain for the Geneva meeting. Cook had then briefed British journalists to say that the Russians were trying to help India. But the Russian position on the task force is at present an unknown factor because only the ministers from Britain and the US have taken public stage.
The silence of Primakov might not be entirely diplomatic, though. During the Bosnia crisis, Primakov had appeared on television to say that the situation was "terrific." A cameraman shouted from behind that he probably meant terrible. "Yes, terrible," Primakov said, as he walked away. Primakov has since then tended to stay away from the media glare.
The technical aspects of the task force that Albright referred to are expected to include economic measures, "but they could under some guise be designed to keep bringing up the Kashmir issue at international meetings," an Indian diplomat said. "They can effectively internationalise what they say is a bilateral issue by bringing it up everywhere, and they are doing that already," he said. Diplomats see the task force as mounting such kind of political pressure on India and Pakistan while the US sticks primarily to economic pressure.
Albright's call was a little more straightforward, if less polite. She asked India and Pakistan to "dig yourselves out of the hole you've gotten yourselves into." While they stayed in the hole, she said, "there will be no drift back to business as usual." One way of climbing out, she suggested, would be to sign the CTBT.
Under cover of the P5 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council: the US, Russia, China, Britain and France) and the G-8 (group of eight industrialised nations: the US, Russia, Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Canada and Italy), and of the apparent equidistance from India and Pakistan, Cook is having another go at India.
Listen to him again. "We are very firmly of the view that if we have to succeed, then these issues will have to be addressed," he said. That remark calls for translation from British English to plain English. In a language where "quite extraordinary" means "bloody outrageous," Cook was saying the Kashmir issue had better be resolved, or else. Nobody knows or else what, but that thinking can be left to Cook for some time. It is "a task that will take some time to resolve," he said. Months, he said, maybe years. He intends to keep at it.
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