The Hindu : Opinion / Editorials : BUILD ON THE RAPPORT

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jun 24, 2004

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

BUILD ON THE RAPPORT

WHILE THE NORMALISATION of relations between India and Pakistan will require hard and painstaking effort, the smoothness with which the dialogue was resumed after the change of government in New Delhi is most reassuring. External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Khurshid Mehmud Kasuri have promised to discuss all the issues in contention between the two countries in a positive and sustained manner. The two Ministers are scheduled to meet several times in the coming weeks. This will enable them to provide political guidance as well as specific inputs to the series of official-level discussions on different subjects that are to take place on parallel tracks. Officials from the two countries have already held talks on the methods to control trafficking in narcotics and on confidence building measures (CBMs) in the field of nuclear weapons. While the two neighbours decided to persist with the moratorium on nuclear weapon tests, they made no more than modest progress towards the goal of establishing mechanisms and procedures that will help reduce the risk of nuclear war. They decided to set up a hotline between the Foreign Secretaries and to upgrade the existing communication links between the Directors General of Military Operations. Both sides also agreed that they would try to reach an accord, with technical parameters, on pre-notification of missile test-flights. Incremental improvements of this nature are welcome but much more will need to be done before the two countries can live up to the claim of being responsible nuclear weapon powers.

Pakistan has shown interest in India's proposal jointly to evolve a common nuclear security doctrine. (While Mr. Singh had suggested that Beijing should participate in such an exercise, that does not appear very likely since China is in a different league from India or Pakistan as a nuclear weapon power). However, Islamabad and New Delhi have barely begun to explore common ground let alone work on a practical agenda to reduce nuclear risk in South Asia. In editorialising on this issue, The Hindu (June 19) referred to the eminently sensible recommendations made by two physicists, M. V. Ramana and R. Rajaraman, in an article published earlier in this newspaper. They recommended that New Delhi should offer not to deploy nuclear weapons and that it should stop installing early warning systems; given a sub-continental context in which the response time was dangerously short, such systems increase the risk of an accidental or unauthorised nuclear war. Since the two countries have apparently inducted nuclear weapons into their defence establishments but apparently not deployed delivery platforms armed with warheads, the recommended measures could serve to initiate a de-escalation breakthrough.

An interesting aspect of the current India-Pakistan interaction on nuclear issues is the joint acknowledgement that both countries are on the same, disadvantaged side of the discriminatory global nuclear bargain: thus the joint appeal for holding "regular working-level meetings... among all nuclear powers to discuss issues of common concern." A similar sense of realism should inform their approach to the other contentious issues that obstruct normalisation. Pakistan is not inclined to de-link negotiations on Kashmir from the other issues on the agenda of the bilateral dialogue. However, Islamabad does appear to have set aside its policy of blocking forward movement in other spheres until it saw progress on talks relating to Kashmir. New Delhi too should look beyond its concerns over security as it re-evaluates the proposal for a gas pipeline from Iran that will run through Pakistan. The expansion of the points of engagement with Pakistan will not only help normalisation but also promote India's national and democratic interests. With the political leadership of India and Pakistan striking a rapport, the Foreign Secretaries can begin serious discussions on Kashmir and security issues when they meet later this month.

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