From Agra with hope

Musharraf and Vajpayee revive the Lahore process

Positive, was the first official word from the Indian side that came out of the longer than planned one-to-one meeting between Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf. ‘Fruitful’ was the first word that Mr Musharraf himself had to describe the first round of talks. A positive and fruitful outcome at the end of the first half day of dialogue between India and Pakistan is enough to have justified Agra. However, it must be said that when all the dust settles down on the Agra summit, when all the hype is over and analysts settle down to give their final verdict on what really happened at Agra the conclusion they would come to would be rather embarrassing for Mr Musharraf. It is still not clear if there will be an Agra declaration or not but, if there is, the judgement on the Agra summit will be that it helped India and Pakistan return to the point at which they had last left their bilateral relationship in Lahore.

The Lahore Declaration jointly signed by Mr Vajpayee and Mr Musharraf’s predecessor and bete-noire, former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (the text of which is printed on the facing page) has said almost everything that Mr Musharraf wanted Mr Vajpayee to say at Agra. Yes, even the phraseology on the “resolution” of the so-called “outstanding issue of Jammu and Kashmir”, which the Lahore Declaration had said was “essential” to the creation of an “environment of peace and security” in the region, echoes what Mr Musharraf now wants. So what was the hype surrounding Agra all about? Simple. General Musharraf had planned to get rid of Mr Nawaz Sharif and he had planned to occupy the Kargil heights to be able to negotiate on Kashmir and Siachen with India. If the Lahore summit had succeeded Mr Musharraf would have remained a footnote in the history of the sub-continent. By sabotaging the Lahore summit and getting rid of Mr Sharif, Mr Musharraf has now come around in Agra to accepting the same terms for peace and reconciliation in the region set out in the Lahore declaration. With a difference, of course. It took the magnanimity of Mr Vajpayee and the Indian people, willing to put Kargil behind them and seek an accord again, that made Agra possible.