Diplomacy: Kashmir: Back on the Burner

India sticks to its no-third stand as Pakistan tries to put the issue on the global agenda again.

It has been an ironical corollary to a decision to enhance Indian security. Within two weeks of the May 11-13 Shakti nuclear tests, India finds itself a country besieged on the issue of Kashmir. Having failed through its eight-year-old proxy war to seize the state, the latest Pakistani diplomatic offensive to wrest Kashmir from Indian control has struck a gusher.

Last week, a meeting of the Nuclear Five (N-5), who dominate the United Nations -- the US, China, Russia, France and Britain -- called on the two sides to "seriously address" the Kashmir issue. On the eve of the meeting, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright -- whose father Josef Korbel was once a UN mediator in Kashmir -- declared there was no shortage of countries wanting to volunteer as peace brokers. But the question was: When would such a move be appropriate and "what country or group of countries were the most capable of delivering on such a role"?

For the second time in a decade, the Kashmir issue is set to become the centrepiece of the West's strategy to resolve what its media terms "the nuclear crisis". This time, however, with the full connivance of Islamabad. Since 1995, confronted with the failure of their low-intensity conflict in the Valley, Pakistani leaders have been asking the West to mediate on Kashmir. Now, in the wake of the nuclear tests, they are telling the world Kashmir is the core issue -- an idea echoed in Washington and Tokyo with increasing frequency.

On the eve of the Geneva meeting, US Secretary of Defence William Cohen said that though India objected to the internationalisation of the issue, "it (the Kashmir matter) has to be on the agenda". Earlier in Tokyo, Japanese Foreign Minister Keizo Obuchi offered to host an international conference to resolve the dispute. The Japanese are likely to push their proposal at a special meeting of the Group of Eight being hosted in London on June 12 by British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who has also been speaking about the need to tackle the "root cause" of what divides the two countries.

In New York, UN Secretary- General Kofi Annan "deplored" the nuclear tests and urged both sides to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. In a related statement, he called on India and Pakistan to reduce tensions, especially in Kashmir. According to a press note, he also took the opportunity "to recall the availability of his good offices".

FUTILE ATTEMPTS

Third-Party initiatives on the Kashmir dispute have never made a headway.

October 23, 1947: Pakistan attacks Kashmir in the guise of a tribal invasion.

January 1, 1948: Nehru takes the issue to the UN.

August 13, 1948 and January 5, 1949: UN passes resolutions ordering a ceasefire, a withdrawal of Pakistani troops and tribals, and thereafter a plebiscite.

1949-1958: UN mediators attempt to implement these conditions but fail.

1963: After India's defeat in the 1962 war, the US compels India to negotiate with Pakistan on Kashmir. The effort comes to nought.

August-September 1965: Pakistan attacks Kashmir again; foiled by the Indian counter-attack on Lahore.

1972: India gets Pakistan to talk on a bilateral basis through the Simla agreement.

December1989: Pakistan begins a low intensity proxy war in Kashmir.

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee did some deft work of his own. For instance, he told visiting Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazzi on June 4 that India was willing to negotiate disarmament at the international level while discussing issues related to Pakistan bilaterally. The previous weekend, he had made it clear to Annan that there was "no role for third-party mediation" on issues that could be handled bilaterally.

As of now, the Pakistani officials remain in a buoyant mood. External mediation to resolve the Kashmir dispute has been a key element in their strategy, especially after the failure of their smash-and-grab approach in 1947, 1965 and 1990. Western interest in Kashmir comes at a time when Pakistani-aided insurgency in Kashmir is at an ebb. What does this bode for India, isolated in world capitals because of its decision -- in the words of a senior defence official -- to "correct the asymmetry" in its security situation vis-à-vis China and Pakistan by conducting five nuclear tests?

Much to India's chagrin, for the greater part of the past half-century, the world has seen Kashmir as "disputed territory". In 1990, when the rebellion in the Valley coincided with the US President's conclusion that Pakistan was indeed a nuclear power, US policy-makers decided to create a fictitious scenario of an Indo-Pakistani nuclear war linked with Kashmir.

Indian officials who were involved in the Shakti '98 planning were not unmindful of what the prime minister's adviser, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Jaswant Singh calls an effort "to rekindle the matter of Kashmir". Singh, who is in New York on a special mission to the UN, emphasises that the Indian position remains as it has always been: accepting only bilateral negotiations and rejecting third-party efforts. "We're not agreeable to mediators," he says.

The world community, too, realises the difficulties a third-party effort would face. Kashmir became a "dispute" at the UN after India complained on January 1, 1948, that Pakistan had facilitated an invasion of the state from "elements" in its territory. India invoked the UN Charter's Article 35, which is, according to pro-Pakistan historian Alastair Lamb, inherently biased towards India since action under its provisions is "essentially of an advisory nature". The US tried its hand at mediation -- albeit backstage in 1963 -- but that too failed.

With this history of third-party failure, should India fear the moves of the N-5? Former ambassador to Washington K.S. Bajpai says that with the situation in the Valley under control, India can sit out the pressure as it has in the past. At the same time, he cautions: "Let there be no doubt that India's task is infinitely more complicated now than it was before the tests." This is because India has, according to former foreign secretary Muchkund Dubey, "threatened the world nuclear order". Indian officials now have to worry about a range of scenarios they may confront -- from informal mediation to threats to use the UN Charter's draconian Articles 41 and 42 through which the world body can mandate a blockade of India followed by possible military action.

India's goal is to preserve the gains of Shakti '98 even as it fends off pressures by the nuclear "haves" to "roll back" or freeze its nuclear capabilities. It has to do this in a situation where there is a congruence of interests between the powerful nuclear "haves" of the world and Pakistan's efforts to wrest Kashmir from India. What India finds difficult to do is to convince the world that Pakistan's hostility will not recede even if it is given Kashmir. This is something that only someone familiar with the history of the creation of Pakistan will understand. For the present, however, with Islamabad playing the stalking horse for the N-5, Delhi's aims are much less ambitious.