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Follow up by both leaders crucial, Say US experts

Three leading American specialists on South Asia have said that even if a peace process can be mooted at the upcoming Agra summit between Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistani President Gen.Pervez Musharraf, it could be touted as a success.

The experts on the subcontinent who were participating at a seminar on "The India-Pakistan Summit," organized by The Brooking Institution, agreed that the wheel need not be reinvented vis-a-vis a peace process, and that a resurrection of the Lahore process would be sufficient to enhance Vajpayee's stature as a statesman and lend legitimacy to the otherwise military dictator Musharraf.

The overriding consensus however was that envisaging any dramatic breakthroughs would be wishful thinking and that it was likely the stalemate over the Kashmir imbroglio would remain although some private arrangements to lower the temperature by both sides could be among some confidence building measures likely to emerge.

Teresita Schaffer, Director of the South Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies(CSIS), however warned that if in the aftermath of the summit "the process is simply left to the foreign secretaries,nothing will happen."

"Anyone of us can write the memorandum to that meeting,"she said. "You have to have Prime Minister Vajpayee and President Musharraf breathing down their necks to see the process go forward." And this has to be maintained "on a sustained basis."

Dennis Kux, senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and author of the just completed book titled The United States and Pakistan,1947-2000:Disenchanted Allies, " echoed similar sentiments. Whether the summit would be "a real success or not will depend on what happens afterwards. If it loses steam, it will just go the way of other summits," he said.

Prof.Stephen P.Cohen, who heads the South Asia program at Brookings,predicted that "my judgement is that the summit will be a success because both sides want to create the appearance of a success."

Cohen said he believed it was likely that "there will be agreement on CBMs,"and both sides would most likely "agree to implement some of the CBMs agreed to in the past."

"Even if they implement only half of the CBMs," agreed to in previous summits,"the summit would be a success,"he said.

Once such a process is underway, Cohen said, the US could then enter the picture by offering to provide some technology to alleviate risk reduction between these two nuclear powers, and thereby help alleviate Washington's own fears of a accidental nuclear confrontation between New Delhi and Islamabad due to misperceptions or increased paranoia.

The summit therefore, where the US is concerned,Cohen said is a "win-win situation" between Pakistan a country with "major problems"and India a nation,which is "a rising power."

He said if some nuclear CBMs are agreed to by India and Pakistan, the US can use it "as a face-saving device to lift the sanctions," imposed against both countries after their tit-for-tat nuclear tests in May 1998.

Cohen said there was agreement in the majority of Administration and Congressional circles that the sanctions "have far outlived their usefulness."

On the matter of trust and whether Vajpayee and India could trust Musharraf,widely believed to be the architect to orchestrated the Kargil invasion by Pakistani troops and Islamabad-backed mercenaries,Schaffer said trust is irrelevant.

"You don't start a peace process with trust,"she said. "The purpose of the process is to create trust." Kux said he believed Musharraf could be trusted, and joked that on Tuesday, "His mother said so."

But seriously,Kux added, "He seems a straight shooter," and argued that on a more broad level he was the only game in town and "if you want to make a deal with Pakistan, make it with the people who hold the power, and that's the army."

And from the Pakistani perspective, "if you are making a deal, make it with the BJP," because they are a nationalistic party "and their flanks are covered," and would never be expected by the people to sell out.

Kux however asserted that the hard-line adopted by the Pakistanis may have helped to "get India to the bargaining table."

"The struggle has paid off, the hard-line has paid off. They have got India to the negotiating table."

But he acknowledged that if Pakistan gets fixated on Kashmir and does not "show more flexibility,"the summit would surely fail.

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