The Hindu : India and Pakistan must keep talking: Vajpayee

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jan 04, 2004

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India and Pakistan must keep talking: Vajpayee

By Amit Baruah and B. Muralidhar Reddy

ISLAMABAD JAN. 3. The Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, confirmed today that he would interact with his Pakistani hosts during his three-day stay in Islamabad for the 12th SAARC summit that begins on Sunday.

Mr. Vajpayee, who arrived here in a special Indian Air Force aircraft, said in an interview to Pakistan Television this evening that he believed that India could talk to the Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf, and expressed the hope that this would lead to concrete achievements.

He described Gen. Musharraf as the "biggest leader" of Pakistan, with whom he had been interacting since his February 1999 visit to Lahore. The Prime Minister wanted him to play a role in promoting peace with India.

Mr. Vajpayee, who was received at the airport by his Pakistani counterpart, Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, said that India and Pakistan must keep talking. "We have never shied away from a dialogue on Kashmir" even though India believed that Kashmir was an integral part of its territory.

The two countries had never really got down to serious discussions on the Kashmir issue, but had been reiterating their positions. Any serious dialogue aimed at resolving this issue would take time.

Pakistan, he pointed out, was a neighbour and India needed to live with it. The choice was between living in peace and a continued state of tension. There was, however, a realisation that "we should live in peace."

Mr. Vajpayee said that it had been his endeavour to make peace with Pakistan ever since his first visit to Islamabad 25 years ago as the External Affairs Minister in the Janata Party Government.

Expressing regret at the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, he denied that the Bharatiya Janata Party had used it for electoral gains. Also, Pakistan-bashing was not an issue in the recent Assembly elections.

The Prime Minister dismissed a suggestion that India was acting as a "junior partner" of the United States and pointed out that the allegation was also levelled against Pakistan. India had relations of equality with the U.S. and had no hesitation differing with it on issues.

The Prime Minister, who arrived a few hours earlier than scheduled (at 4 p.m. IST), was accorded a ceremonial welcome and guard of honour at the Chaklala air base, near here. He then left the air base in a bullet-proof BMW car, specially flown in from India.

The Pakistan Foreign Minister, Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, the Finance Minister, Shaukat Aziz, the Foreign Secretary, Riaz Khokhar, and the Director-General (South Asia), Jalil Abbas Jilani, who had been expelled from India in 2003, were at hand to greet Mr. Vajpayee. The External Affairs Minister, Yashwant Sinha, the National Security Adviser, Brajesh Mishra, and the Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan, Shivshankar Menon, were also present.

Mr. Vajpayee exchanged pleasantries with Mr. Jamali at the airport, holding hands and waving to photographers. He drove to the highly-protected Serena Hotel, opposite the Jinnah Convention Centre, venue of the SAARC summit.

The Prime Minister's willingness to do business with Gen. Musharraf hardly comes as a surprise and is in line with his remarks on December 4, before he left for Abuja, Nigeria. Asked whom he would like to meet in Islamabad — Gen. Musharraf or Mr. Jamali — he said it was okay whoever he met.

In a statement before his SAARC visit, Mr. Vajpayee said, "While in Islamabad, I will take the opportunity of bilateral meetings with other SAARC leaders, besides interacting with our hosts. I hope all discussions, bilateral and regional, would proceed in the spirit of friendship, cooperation and good neighbourliness."

Just before Mr. Vajpayee's arrival here, Pakistan, as chair of the SAARC summit, formally announced that there had been agreement on the text of the South Asian Free Trade Area draft, the SAARC social charter and the additional protocol to the existing convention on terrorism.

Announcing this at a press conference, Mr. Kasuri said that Kashmir was a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan and had nothing to do with the additional protocol on terrorism. He was responding to a question whether the additional protocol would impact the "freedom struggle" in Kashmir.

Mr. Kasuri said one could only be optimistic on India-Pakistan relations and his Prime Minister had tried hard to bring about a dialogue between the two countries. "The general assumption is that this opportunity provided by SAARC should not be missed [for a bilateral meeting between India and Pakistan]," he added.

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