The Hindu : No guarantees in current process, says peace activist

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Feb 22, 2004

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No guarantees in current process, says peace activist

By Our Diplomatic Correspondent

NEW DELHI, FEB. 21. "I don't think that the current situation [between India and Pakistan] guarantees anything," the former Pakistan Finance Minister and well-known peace activist, Mubashir Hasan, said on Friday.

Addressing a meeting organised by the Pakistan-India People's Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFD), the Lahore-based Mr. Hasan said: "We have to be cautious about the new phase. We do not know whether the problem of infiltration or Kashmir will be solved."

Mr. Hasan said that even as India and Pakistan were being swamped by delegations from either side of the border, the question of what makes the governments do what they do should be raised.

Arguing that the first priority of any government was to enhance its hold on power, he stressed that India and Pakistan had been governed by a nationalist agenda, which abhorred the thought of ceding even one inch of territory.

According to him, from 1947 to 1987, both the governments and the people had "agreed" on this nationalist agenda. However, the change started in the early 1980s, when a section of the Indian and Pakistani elites expressed their desire to mend fences.

Referring to the talks between the Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and his then counterpart, Nawaz Sharif, in 1999, Mr. Hasan said that Kargil was a setback to the process of rapprochement since the elites of the two countries were not convinced about the road to peace.

About the failure of the Agra summit in July 2001 between Mr. Vajpayee and the Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf, Mr. Hasan said this revealed a "battle" between those who wanted better relations between India and Pakistan and those who did not.

On the latest agreement to restart the composite dialogue process, the former Finance Minister in the Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Government said that the same thing was agreed to in 1997 by the foreign secretaries. "What they have done now is to implement these decisions. I think it is a very serious matter."

Mr. Hasan said that India and Pakistan were behaving as if nothing had happened in Kashmir. The two Governments would be mistaken in assuming that they could take a decision and then impose it on the Kashmiris. "We urge that the people of Kashmir should be taken into account."

The former West Bengal Finance Minister and chairperson of the PIPFD India Chapter, Ashok Mitra, presided over the meeting.

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