On Agra Summit

Did India and Pakistan have an agreed draft statement before the 2001 Agrasummit collapsed as has repeatedly been claimed in Pakistan? The then ExternalAffairs Minister Jaswant Singh throws some light on this abiding argument in hismemoirs "A Call to Honour" that hit the stands today.

Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Abdul Sattar had been told at the summitin July 2001 to attempt a draft and "together we tried our hand at writingsomething on a piece of paper", he writes.

"I attempted something in pencil on a piece of paper, hecorrected/amended it, I did likewise and so it went on for sometime, to and fro.Finally, he said he would have to consult his President (Gen Pervez Musharraf)before he could assent or disagree" 

Sattar reported to Musharraf, who had gone back to the hotel where he wasstaying, and returned with a "few changes" and asked Singh whether itwas agreeable to him. Singh responded by saying he too had to obtain theclearanace of his cabinet colleagues and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

Singh recalls Sattar telling him that it was 

"a perilous task onwhich both of them were set as negotiators of an agreement and messengersof that agreement ... In such tasks, believe me, quite often, it is the messenger who getsshot." 

As during any other diplomatic negotiation, sotoo, in this, he says, these very preliminary notes would have got refined, shaped,expanded or explained and would then perhaps have led to some forward movement:

"This piece of 'paper' has been variously cited as evidence ofdiscord within the NDA government, of my own personal 'soft approach' againstsome others, and all those speculative flights of fancy, all so entirelyunnecessary"

"This was an exercise at finding a starting point, it was not any agreeddocument. Besides, a draft is no more than a 'draft' so what is all thiscontroversy about?" 

Singh terms as "fruitless and needless" a controversy that gotraised about the text of what had been "agreed upon":

"A curious thesis was thereafter put across that if another meeting werenow held between India and Pakistan, the starting point of that would have to bethe 'piece of paper' on which we had jointly worked. This was truly curious. How could that paper validate what had been donein Agra, even if it had not been done?" 

He recalls showing the paper to Vajpayee, who then called his cabinetcolleagues to the hotel suite.

"The collective view expressed there was that without sufficient andclear emphasis on terrorism, also accepting categorically that it must cease,how could there be any significant movement on issues that are of concern or area priority only to Pakistan? And none that are in the hierarchy of prioritiesfor India? How can we abandon Shimla or Lahore? Or forget the reality of Kargil?I went back and reported failure to Sattar." 

One of the popular theories doing the rounds in those days was that somehardliners in the Vajpayee cabinet had scuttled the Agra talks.

Recollecting the special meeting Musharraf sought with Vajpayee in alast-minute effort to hammer out an agreement, Singh says, 

"I knew that amistake was being made by our guest, for when I later asked Vajpayee what hadhappened, he said quietly, 'nothing'. He said it in Hindi, in effect to mean, "the visiting generalsahib kept talking and I kept listening'. This is an art at which Vajpayee, sooften and so disconcertingly to the unfamiliar, specialises."

Singh also mentions that in Agra, the critical point was Musharraf'sbreakfast meeting with Indianeditors:

"Neither he (Musharraf) nor his team had fully assessed theconsequences, in the Indian public mind, of the rather free-ranging breakfastmeet he had already had with the Indian media. Neither was he able to grasp therationale of hesitation on other's part about his various theses. This was aperfectly understandable military tendency, but workable only in purely militaryenvirons." 

The interaction, "recorded by the visitors and thereafter telecast by anIndian channel", aroused great indignation throughout the country becauseMusharraf came across as too belligerent, he says, adding "it is this thatmade negotiations over the draft so much more difficult".

"This grandstanding fever had induced Gen Musharraf into a great deal ofunrestrained comment in front of a select gathering of editors. Perhaps he hadbeen mesmerised by the media...When, therefore, such an assembly began toapplaud the visiting general, and all in anticipation, he then refused to acceptthe presence of terrorism as an issue, continued to emphasise only thecentrality of Jammu and Kashmir; was also most dismissive of Lahore; would not atall accept the reality of what Kargil was, what he had done; and he seemedalmost to dismiss the Shimla Agreement.

"This was getting too heavy a load for any conference to carry on...InAgra, the critical point was this breakfast meeting that the visiting generalhad with the Indian editors"

Referring to the Kargil conflict of 1991, Singh admits that Vajpayee'scontinued conviction to not expand the field of combat beyond the LoC cost manyIndian lives and time too:

"Many gallant officers and soldiers had to lay down their lives becauseof this enormous restraint India had placed upon itself. Perhaps, this too waspart of Pakistan's miscalculation that we would once again be hustled intoexpanding the scope of the conflict."

He, however, says there were somethings, though unstated, that both India and Pakistan did agree upon post- Agra.

"The principal one was that grandstanding was not the best way toinaugurate an India-Pakistan summit." 

An interesting anecdote Singh refers to in his chapter on 1998 nuclear blastsis the serious concern over the safety of cattle at the test site in Pokhran,something that weighed heavily on the minds of those involved.

"For the team at the test site - which included A P J Abdul Kalam, thenthe head of DRDO and today India's President - possibly death or injury tocattle was just not acceptable. A test to ascertain India's scientific andhi-tech capability would ordinarily not accord too much importance to the safetyof cattle, but this team of scientists did."

Postscript - added on July 21, all based on PTI reports