Fri, Jan 09, 2004 page9

• Brighter peace prospects seen for Kashmir

  After the failure of previous efforts to resolve the status of the contested region, the leaders of India and Pakistan are showing renewed commitment to finding a solution to their mutual problem

  • AP
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  One leader sees his last chance for peace. The other, perhaps, sees his political mortality amid repeated assassination attempts and political opposition.

  But more than two years after their last summit ended in failure, India's prime minister and Pakistan's president have set the groundwork for talks that could end years of enmity.

  In a region long accustomed to the threat of war, peace may actually be at hand.

  "Now, I am a happy man," Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf told reporters after the surprise announcement that the two countries would soon begin comprehensive talks. Among the issues: the divided, bloodied Himalayan region of Kashmir, where more than a half-century of bitterness has been nurtured.

  South Asia has seen optimism before in relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbors. In July 2001, Musharraf traveled to Agra, India to meet Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in a summit many hoped would lead to peace. Instead, within hours of its ending officials were simply trying to show it hadn't been an utter failure.

  But things have changed dramatically since that summit, and the chances of peace appear much better now.

  If nothing else, it's clear both nations want peace, a desire reflected, in part, by the careful way expectations were kept in check in the days before the announcement, and the quiet, behind-the-scenes discussions held during the regional summit in Islamabad that led to Tuesday's announcement.

  "The establishment is determined not to repeat the wrenching experience of the Agra summit in July 2001, where runaway popular expectations ... could not be matched by the outcomes," C. Rajamohan, an Indian security analyst, wrote in The Hindu newspaper before the meeting.

  Less than a year after the Agra summit, the two countries nearly went to war for the fourth time, after a militant attack on the Indian parliament building that New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-backed militants.

  But the past few months have seen regular steps forward, with a truce declared along the line of control that divides Kashmir, where the two countries exchanged near-daily weapons fire. While militant violence continues in Kashmir, road and air links, severed after the parliament attack, have been restored. Peace -- and, both sides hope, the trade that would come with it -- have increasingly seemed possible.

  "There was a growing realization on both sides that peace is a necessity," Pakistani analyst Zahid Malik said in Islamabad.

  Not that peace is a certainty. Just a few months ago Musharraf was blasting India for suppressing "the legitimate struggle of the Kashmiri people." Indian diplomats, for their part, accused Pakistan of the "diplomacy of abuse and hate."

  Easing relations began in April, when the often-ailing Vajpayee stunned the region with the announcement he was ready to resume dialogue.

  "This round of talks will be decisive, and at least for my life, these will be the last," Vajpayee told the Indian Parliament at the time. "We don't want to forget the past, but we don't want to remain slaves of the past."

  Many analysts believe the 79-year-old Vajpayee is desperate to forge a legacy of peace for himself. The prime minister has, as Rajamohan put it, an "irrepressible enthusiasm for exploring different options to break the political deadlock."

  Now, with Indian elections expected in a few months, Vajpayee may be hoping to solidify diplomatic gains before the vote.

  Musharraf, for his part, in mid-December signaled new flexibility on Kashmir, saying Pakistan was willing to look beyond a long-standing UN resolution that calls for a referendum in the disputed region to decide its own future. The resolution has been the basis of Pakistan's Kashmir policy for decades, but is strongly opposed by India.

  It was a significant move for Musharraf, who faces bitter opposition from hard-liners at home, including some in his own army and intelligence services, who see him as a traitor to the Kashmiri militant movement and to the militant Muslim cause in general.

  In the past month, he has twice survived assassination attempts.

  But if talking peace costs Musharraf politically at home, it will earn him tremendous capital with the US, which is desperate to keep him as an ally in its war against terrorism.

  Enmity has been part of India-Pakistan relations since the two countries were carved from British India at independence in 1947. The "partition" of colonial India cost the lives of over a million people, as Muslims went to the new nation of Pakistan and Hindus to modern India.

  Today, Kashmir is at the center of their continued bitterness. A Muslim region whose Hindu prince chose to align himself with India in 1947 -- almost certainly against the wishes of his people -- Kashmir has been divided ever since by India and Pakistan.

  Both nations claim the region in its entirety.
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