Mood Concessive

***

The picturesque Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, also called by the name ‘City of Peace’, has helped bring together the leaders of many warring nations. On Thursday, it helped Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani reach a breakthrough that may help normalise Indo-Pak relations.

After hours of hard-nosed bargaining and backroom negotiations, including a two-hour meeting of the two prime ministers, a joint statement was issued. But it came only after India agreed to a major concession, stressing that “action on terrorism should not be linked to the composite dialogue process and these should not be bracketed.” The vagueness in the wording was perhaps deliberate: it allowed both India and Pakistan to interpret it in the manner best suited to each.

Take & give? Gilani, Manmohan in Egypt

Gilani made it clear the outcome of the talks was a victory for Pakistan. Manmohan, on his part, tried to clarify that talks with Pakistan wouldn’t be resumed unless it showed some movement in bringing to book those behind Mumbai 26/11. “The statement is sufficiently vague and confusing to have either side interpret it their way, and both PMs have done precisely that,” says K.C. Singh, a former Indian diplomat.

But the categorical delinking of terror from dialogue, however, came both as a surprise and a disappointment to many in the Indian foreign policy establishment. They felt Manmohan had yielded much more than necessary to ensure the talks with Gilani didn’t end up a failure. “These are deeply disappointing developments,” says Kanwal Sibal, former foreign secretary. “On the face of it, there seems to be a complete volteface by India.” Many others share that sentiment. They feel the delinking of developments on the terror front from the composite dialogue is in total contradiction to the position India has been taking all along.

In fact, the contradiction became all the more glaring because it was only last month—when Manmohan met Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting in Russia—that the PM issued a stern message saying there could be no progress unless Islamabad took credible steps against terror aimed at India. And Manmohan had taken the unprecedented step of delivering this message to Zardari in the full glare of the media. The unequivocal words then were: “My mandate is to tell you that Pakistani territory should not be used for terrorism against India.”

What, then, made India change its stand? There are some who argue that there’s been no shift in India’s position. “It’s a generous approach,” says Naresh Chandra, a former diplomat and bureaucrat. “Terror is different from the composite dialogue and has to be dealt with separately. That’s the clear message Manmohan Singh has sent.” But others say what India has done needs to be seen in the context of the growing concern over the Indo-Pak situation among key international players, particularly the US. The fact that the breakthrough came through in Egypt barely a day before the US secretary of state is to arrive in India on a five-day visit has lent weight to the view that Manmohan’s action was aimed at keeping the Americans happy.

It’s a view opposition leaders are inclined to agree with. “I’m shocked and scandalised at the joint statement, which clearly shows a complete surrender on part of India,” says Yashwant Sinha, a bjp leader and former foreign minister. “It seems an advance gift for Hillary Clinton before she arrives.”

But Indian diplomats say not engaging with Pakistan is hardly an option. When Manmohan was in Italy for the G-8/G-5 Summit, the current state of Indo-Pak relations had come up during his bilateral meetings with some world leaders. Most of them sympathised with India as a victim of cross-border terrorism, but advised that New Delhi should continue to engage with Islamabad; dialogue was the only way out of the logjam.

This course is also dictated by practicalities, for Indian diplomats and officials admit that India hardly has any leverage to force Pakistan to deliver on its promise to dismantle the terror structure and prevent future terrorist actions directed at India. Since going to war is ruled out, the only way to put pressure on the hostile neighbour, they say, is to build a campaign against it among key international players like the US, which is capable of exerting its leverage on Islamabad and make it give up using terror as a foreign policy tool against India.

Those abiding by this thinking feel the only way New Delhi can make the US and others listen is by playing the role of a mature nation trying to resolve disputes even in the face of extreme provocation. Referring to the joint statement, senior mea officials said Manmohan had agreed to delinking terror from dialogue only after a personal commitment from Gilani that Islamabad would do whatever was necessary to punish the perpetrators of Mumbai 26/11. Hafeez Sayeed, suspected mastermind of that audacious attack and recently freed from house arrest in Lahore, is a case in point. The Pakistani authorities must move a fresh appeal before the country’s Supreme Court to challenge the decision to set him free if India is to be assuaged. Pakistan is likely to do so.

Clearly, it’s a wait-and-watch situation, for Indo-Pak relations have in the past been punctuated with similar joint statements, in which different regimes in Islamabad have promised to stop all terrorist activity against India. There are many in India who, therefore, believe that the Sharm el-Sheikh joint statement is perhaps only an addition to the growing pile of similar documents of over a decade—with little real progress in checking what matters for security in India’s cities and other possible terrorist targets.