Pakistan and the Neighbourhood - Implosion: India's Tryst with Reality - page 317

with Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Bhutan'. 5 The aim was not just to stop terrorism and cross-
border insurgencies but jointly to develop South Asia.
Ironic though it may seem, the best progress on a deal in recent years came after General
Pervez Musharraf, who had engineered a near-war on the LoC at Kargil in 1999 when he
was Pakistan's army chief of staff, became president. The start, though, was not auspi-
cious. Vajpayee organized summit talks in July 2001 in Agra, the Taj Mahal tourist city,
and Musharraf used his public relations skills and apparent friendliness to upstage Vajpayee
with an unscheduled televised breakfast Briefing for newspaper editors. The summit ended
in confusion and failure, with hardline ministers on both sides upsetting whatever the two
leaders had hoped to agree. India's BJP leaders felt it was not sellable, politically. 6
This was followed by an agreement on Line of Control 'ceasefire' in November 2003,
which dramatically reduced the cross-border clashes and general violence in Jammu and
Kashmir. (official figures show that the number of incidents came down from 3,401 in 2003
when 795 civilians, 314 security forces and 1,494 militants were killed to 118 incidents in
2012 with 23 civilians, 14 security forces and 58 militants killed. 7 )
Vajpayee had more talks with Musharraf in 2004 and then Manmohan Singh picked up
on the initiatives when he became prime minister. The solution that was being worked out
would not have led to any change on the borders, but aimed to make the Line of Control
irrelevant with gradual demilitarization and devolved government. There would have been
a 'soft border' with relaxed visa restrictions, cross-border travel and trade, the reunifica-
tion of divided families and friends, and liaison arrangements on economic policy and oth-
er matters. Musharraf has said that the four-point agenda was not complete, but that wide
agreement had been reached despite some hitches. 8 This was, however, not approved (and
might never have been) by the Pakistan army, nor by hard-line lobbies in either country,
and the talks faded away when Musharraf faced increasing political problems in Pakistan
and was ousted from office in 2008. Such a solution is not feasible now because India could
not accept a soft border when Pakistan is wracked by the uncertainties of Taliban terrorism.
Relations next seemed to improve after the appointment of a young and personable
34-year-old Pakistan foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar. Visiting Delhi in July 2011, she
spoke of a 'mindset change' in both countries and of a new generation seeing the relation-
ship differently from the past. 9 'It is our desire to make the dialogue process uninterrupted
and uninterruptible,' she said. It sounded like 23 years earlier when Benazir Bhutto and
Rajiv Gandhi, then young prime ministers of Pakistan and India, met in 1988 and brought a
fresh but short-lived focus. Would this be any different? It was not clear what weight Khar's
words carried because of power being divided in Pakistan between the government, the
military and the ISI - the signals were mixed and were undermined regularly by Pakistan's
aggressive and voluble interior minister, Rehman Malik. 10