Tit-for-tat N-tests bring Kashmir back on international agenda
George Iype in New Delhi
Three weeks after the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government conducted the nuclear tests, the nuclear
tit-for-tat diplomacy between India and Pakistan has brought Jammu and Kashmir back on the international
agenda.
Analysts say the Bharatiya Janata Party government's decision to make India a nuclear power has unwittingly
internationalised the vexed Kashmir issue, forcing the United Nations, the Big Five and the G-8
to bring Kashmir into the disarmament dialogue.
The Kashmir issue in the post-nuclear phase of the Asian subcontinent is expected to top the agenda at the
proposed meeting of G-8 foreign ministers in London on June 12.
British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook has already announced that the G-8 meeting must get to "the root of the
Kashmir dispute" in the wake of the Indo-Pak nuclear tests. Cook had created a stir during Queen
Elizabeth's visit to India last year, with his controversial pro-Pakistan remarks on Kashmir.
Similarly, in the coming weeks, the five nuclear powers -- the US, China, Russia, France and
Britain -- are likely to debate over how to stop the nuclear proliferation world-wide after India and Pakistan's
blast-for-blast diplomacy virtually killed the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's suggestions to Prime Minister Vajpayee that he is willing to lend a
helping hand to resolve the Kashmir problem has also put the BJP government in a bind.
Though Vajpayee has categorically told Annan that nuclear test or no test Kashmir is not open to third party
interference or negotiation, what has been disturbing for the government perhaps is the secretary general's initiative to step
in between India and Pakistan after the nuclear blasts.
On Sunday, Annan spoke over the telephone to former prime minister Inder Kumar Gujral, pleading with the veteran leader
to use his "good offices" to prevent a nuclear arms race in South Asia.
While Gujral too rejected any third-party intervention on the Kashmir dispute, many believe the nuclear blasts
have forced the Vajpayee government to test its diplomatic skills to ensure that Kashmir does not become an
agenda in the P-5 and G-8 meetings.
"The biggest fall-out of the government's decision to conduct the nuclear tests is that it has put the Kashmir
issue on an international negotiation table," a security analyst closely associated with the Vajpayee government
told Rediff On The NeT.
He said a section within the Vajpayee government now fears that what Pakistan has failed to achieve for
decades -- bring Kashmir centrestage -- has been accomplished by the BJP with the nuclear blasts.
"It is a diplomatic test for the BJP government because Kashmir has been brought into the
disarmament agenda in fora like G-8 and P-5," the analyst said.
Analysts like him believe that the only way that India can get out of the "nuclear mess" is either "to become a
resistant power" or to immediately re-open the bilateral dialogue between the rival countries.
Last year, the 'Gujral doctrine' of good neighbourly relations in the region had
encouraged Pakistan to discuss Kashmir within the bilateral framework as envisaged in the 1972 Simla Pact.
India and Pakistan resumed foreign secretary level talks in March 1997 after a break of more than three years. The
then foreign secretary of India, Salman Haider, and Pakistani foreign secretary Shamshad Ahmed, had identified
eight "outstanding issues of concern to both sides."
The eight issues were peace and security, Jammu and Kashmir, Siachen, the Wullar barrage project and Tulbul
navigation project, Sir Creek, terrorism and drug trafficking, economic and commercial co-operation and
promotion of friendly exchanges in various fields.
Gujral and Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief had met in New York last September in an
effort to settle their five-decade-old dispute over Kashmir.
But in October, the momentum of the peace talks abruptly ended after Islamabad insisted that India
should agree to its demand to set up a joint working group to examine the Kashmir issue. India refused the
demand. The issue could not be resolved and not much progress could be made on the Indo-Pak talks as India
went in for a general election.
Now that both countries have exercised their nuclear options and come under international economic
sanctions, diplomatic experts believe any new direction to the peace dialogue would necessarily involve Kashmir
atop the agenda.
Dates for a fresh round of bilateral talks are yet to be agreed upon and announced. But it is certain that Pakistan would
insist that since Kashmir is central to the success of the Indo-Pakistan dialogue, the Vajpayee government should
constitute a joint working group to find a meaningful settlement to the vexed Kashmir issue.
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