'Musharraf may be ready to meet Vajpayee'

By Kesava Menon

MANAMA (Bahrain), DEC. 1 An individual who has been mediating between India, Pakistan and Kashmiri leaders from both sides of the LoC (with the blessings if not active support of the U.S. administration), has claimed that Pakistan Chief Executive, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, may hold a summit meeting with the Prime Minister, Mr. A.B. Vajpayee, in New Delhi after Ramadhan if the ceasefire does not collapse.

In an interview to Gulf News, Mr. Mansoor Ijaz, member of the U.S.-based Council on Foreign Relations and investment fund manager, said it was possible to devise a formula whereby Gen. Musharraf could signal an end of support for cross-border militancy without undermining Pakistan's known policies and positions.

The face-saving formula that Mr. Ijaz and perhaps some other forces active in the mediation have devised consisted of a unilateral decision by Pakistan to support the Kashmir cease-fire and a call to all militant groups to observe it.

``By definition a valley-wide cease-fire would imply that cross- border violations at the Line of Control would stop and therefore the key stumbling block for direct talks with Delhi would be removed with out Pakistan having to concede that its military operations along the LoC enabled such violations to occur. On its part, India would not have to politically open up to Pakistan under conditions which no parliamentary debate could withstand,'' Mr. Ijaz elaborated.

He said it would be ``glaringly easy'' for Gen. Musharraf to support a cease-fire since winter snow would soon restrict the scope for border crossings. He said he had made this proposal to Gen. Musharraf and was expecting a response.

In an interesting discourse, that covered an appreciation of the compulsions and requirements of different sides as well as a prognosis of the hoped-for course of events, Mr. Ijaz suggested a way around the ``tripartite talks'' hurdle.

If it were Pakistan's case, that they should be involved in the negotiations on cease-fire modalities, at the outset and before the cessation of support for cross-border militancy, then they were betraying a ``complete lack of understanding of their own publicly stated position.''

An insistence on this point amounted to an admission that Pakistan was providing more than diplomatic and moral support for the Kashmiris.

``While the world intelligence community knows how much military support the ISI and army give the Kashmiris, it is patently absurd for Islamabad to violate its own publicly stated position and thereby create a false pretense for not talking.''

Initially the Indo-Pak talks could be bifurcated from the talks between the Government and the militants but, according to Mr. Ijaz, India would not ultimately be able to avoid a tripartite format because militant groups would insist on it.

Mr. Ijaz did take cognisance of the central dilemma India faced in evaluating the idea of talking to Pakistan.

Although Mr. Ijaz claimed to have contacts with various segments of Pakistan's military and intelligence community as well as militant groups he too asked whether it was Gen. Musharraf who was really running Pakistan or whether it was a committee of hardline military and intelligence officers and those who finance Pakistan's support to the `jehadi' groups. Convinced that Gen. Musharraf was personally interested in a peaceful settlement of the dispute, he said in the ultimate analysis the military ruler would be able to overcome internal resistance because a peaceful settlement was what the Kashmiris wanted.

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