The Hindu : The mutual suspicion stays

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Thursday, Sep 18, 2003

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The mutual suspicion stays

By Amit Baruah

It may not have been enshrined in the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation charter, but extending "personal invitations" to heads of state/government for summit meetings has become a SAARC convention.

The then Nepalese Agriculture Minister, Mahesh Acharya, travelled to different SAARC capitals before the 11th SAARC Summit of January 6, 2002, in Kathmandu. So did the then Sri Lankan Foreign Minister, Lakshman Kadirgamar, to hand over invitations personally to different guests before the July 31, 1998 summit in Colombo.

This time round, speculation has ended as planned — no Pakistani official will come to New Delhi after being publicly snubbed.

On Monday, the Foreign Secretary, Kanwal Sibal, had made himself clear on the Pakistan Foreign Minister, Khurshid Kasuri's plans to travel to India. "There is no requirement for a personal visit," he told presspersons. It was intended to invite a Pakistani response, which it did.

Mr. Kasuri, who has already visited Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka to personally invite the leaders of those countries, was scheduled to come to India, Bhutan and the Maldives on the "second leg" of his journey.

Besides Mr. Sibal, the External Affairs Minister, Yashwant Sinha, was quoted as saying on Sunday: "I would like to say that the Foreign Ministers of countries do not go around delivering invitation to the Heads of Government. There are other diplomatic channels available."

"In any case, the dates of the SAARC summit have been decided by the SAARC Standing Committee and we know about it," he said in a published interview.

Diplomatic observers here believe that the idea behind both Mr. Sibal's and Mr. Sinha's remarks was to make Mr. Kasuri uncomfortable, even to ensure that he dropped his plans. In the tit-for-tat actions in India-Pakistan relations, Islamabad came out with a harsh statement on Tuesday night — Mr. Sibal's remarks were "inappropriate, regrettable and discourteous".

Clearly, this exchange is not going to help create a "conducive atmosphere" ahead of the proposed SAARC summit in Islamabad to be held from January 4-6, 2004. It only shows that behind the "hand of friendship" lies deep-seated hostility between the two countries.

India, it appears, does not want to welcome a Pakistani Foreign Minister who, going by protocol, would be received by the Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. That is a signal of "normality" India is not prepared to send out at this stage of the re-engagement game with Pakistan.

New Delhi is conveying the message that a dialogue with Pakistan will take place at a time of its choosing. It does not want a visit by Mr. Kasuri at this point of time. The Government spokesmen have been repeatedly saying that the problem of cross-border terrorism remains as severe as it was.

High Commissioners have returned to Islamabad and New Delhi, the Lahore-Delhi bus service may have resumed, detained fishermen may have been freed, but progress on other fronts has been painfully slow. The latest Indian remarks are hardly going to help in, say, restoring civil aviation links or an agreement on resuming overflights in the near future.

Earlier this year, the SAARC Standing Committee of Foreign Secretaries met in Kathmandu to agree to the January 4-6 dates for the summit. Officials who attended the meeting said the "atmosphere" was "icy" as Mr. Sibal met with Pakistani counterpart, Riaz Khokhar, and others.

Business delegations and groups of Parliamentarians may be travelling between India and Pakistan. But the levels of suspicion between the establishments remain high.

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