No, says a senior official with the ministry of external affairs. "It is we who have encouraged them against making statements, simply because it would have no direct bearing on Pakistan's conduct," he says. "Rather, if they stayed ostensibly neutral, any informal advice that they might give Pakistan would be heeded that much more. Their silence is deliberate."
The government's primary attempt, he says, was to get nations which could exert pressure on Pakistan to endorse India's position. "Our focus was to bear down on Pakistan with nations that had some economic or strategic leverage with it," he says. And neither nam nor saarc has such clout.
That may be so. But the fact is that none of the nam countries, barring some like Ethiopia, have come out in open support of India. Most of the public statements issued by them have been studiedly neutral. Worse still, many of the member states have not even issued any official statement. To argue that India wanted only the support of the G-8 countries is to miss the point. At a time like this, the important thing for New Delhi is to build pressure on Pakistan from every country possible.
It is understandable why India is reluctant to take the matter to the saarc and nam fora. The saarc charter prohibits the discussion of bilateral problems between two members. For years, India has fiercely opposed Pakistani attempts to rake up Kashmir at saarc meetings. Similarly, India reacted very sharply when former South African president Nelson Mandela, as chairperson of the nam summit, mentioned it in his address at the summit last year.
Still, there is no bar on the members of these two bodies from expressing their opinions individually as sovereign states. Then why have India's immediate neighbours remained silent and no major nam country supported it?
"Perhaps because they realise that Kashmir is at the heart of Kargil and Kashmir has hardly ever been discussed in nam," says Dr Mahendra P. Lama of the South Asia division, Jawaharlal Nehru University. "nam has never taken a stand on Kashmir in the past, so why should they do so now?" Besides, he adds, "nam is no longer an effective force in today's world. Other regional fora like the EU, asean and saarc are much more effective." He contends that India was correct to give precedence to G-8 in its efforts to win international support. "Imagine having to convince 113 nations of diverse political and social colours to come out with a unanimous statement. It would be a very tiresome process. And how much real influence would that have had on Pakistan anyway?
"As for our silent neighbours, perhaps one of the reasons for their silence is that they are apprehensive that if they did issue blatantly pro-India statements, they would alienate Pakistan, the only neighbour other than China which can stand up to India. After all, all these nations do see India as a major regional power and have reasons, justified and unjustified, to fear further consolidation of its influence. And each and every one of these nations at one time or the other has used their cards against India."
Dismissing this as a "theoretical view," the external affairs ministry official says, "Bangladesh has no particular reason to support Pakistan. Besides, we are among their biggest trading partners. And neither does Sri Lanka. As for Nepal and Bhutan, we have special treaties of friendship and cooperation with them... Nepalese soldiers are fighting in Kashmir, so in a way it's their war too. After all this, why do we need public expression of their support?"
South Africa, currently holding the nam chairmanship, did issue a statement at the initial stages of the Kargil conflict, calling for the resolution of the dispute by peaceful means. D.K. Pillai, acting South African High Commissioner, admits that the nam chair had not been approached by any member so far to raise the issue and hence it was not on the forum's agenda. As for his government's stand, he pointed out that then president Mandela, during his visit to Islamabad on May 4, had categorically told prime minister Nawaz Sharif that Kashmir was a bilateral issue.
Another South Asia expert and Lama's colleague, Dr Kalim Bahadur, agrees that fears of Indian hegemony may be one reason, though not the main one, for this silence in the region. "Smaller neighbours are prone to a natural feeling of vulnerability and India must learn to live with it," he says. As for nam, he shrugs it off, saying, "People do not bother about the UN anymore, so forget nam."
Arguing that the forum has long since lost its relevance as a major pressure group, he says: "The impulse is not there. It was formed as group during the bipolar world. Today, it's a different world. One of the poles has disappeared. So there is no room to maneouvre, nowhere to go. nam no longer carries much conviction. So why should we be bothered?"
Coming back to the neighbours, Lama offers another possible reason for their refusal to speak out: "Suppose these saarc nations did endorse India's stand. Pakistan's obvious reaction would be to withdraw from saarc. And the entire forum would be destroyed, a forum which has made much progress in its attempts to bring about regional cooperation would suddenly lose one of its primary members. The success of saarc as a forum is entirely dependent on India and Pakistan. So perhaps they decided that to keep quiet would be the best thing, finding it prudent not to rock the boat."
On the other hand, a foreign ministers' meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Countries (oic) in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, issued a statement last week supporting Pakistan. But Bahadur pooh-poohs it by pointing out that the oic's charter allows any resolution from any member state to be passed, without any debate or discussion.
On the very first day of its annual gathering, the oic secretary general A. Laraki had said: "It is incumbent on the international community to back Pakistan's orientation to end the conflict." Represented by 56 foreign ministers of Islamic countries, the forum has regularly been used by Pakistan to voice its stand on Kashmir. "But the forum does not carry much conviction," says Bahadur, "because it is a puppet in the hands of Saudi Arabia. And the Pakistani diplomats, being more suave and articulate than the Saudis, have managed to use the forum to voice their views. But then, most of the member nations later take a different stand altogether. Some even admit that they go along with resolutions that do not reflect their own country's views for political and economic reasons. " In other words, they are afraid of losing Saudi aid.
At a press conference last week, the bjp vice-president and party spokesman K.L. Sharma too dismissed the oic resolution as "insignificant," and pointed out that many oic members had "individually and separately" expressed their appreciation of India's restraint in handling the Kargil issue. Regarding Bangladesh, an official of the high commission confirmed that regardless of what the oic resolution may have said, and despite the fact that Bangladesh was yet to issue a formal statement, Dhaka's long-held position was that Kashmir is a bilateral issue. In fact, Sheikh Hasina had reiterated this at a joint press conference with prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee after the inauguration of the Calcutta-Dhaka bus service.
But the fact that India does not feel it necessary to invoke statements from it neighbours doesn't mean they are kept in the dark, asserts an external affairs ministry official. "All our neighbours have been briefed extensively on the issue and privately they are more than appreciative of our position. Deep in our hearts, we know that they are with us."
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