To Russia with love, and a bit of luck

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While everyone sorts out just what Elections 2009 meant for the Congress, the BJP, the Left- what has perhaps crept up on all concerned, unnoticed is what the election verdict has meant for India-Pakistan ties.

The solid mandate the UPA recieved has now allowed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to take off for Russia with ease, his officials making it very clear that he will be meeting with President Zardari on the sidelines of the SCO summit- and holding talks with him. Gone is the shifty eyed south-block diplomatic speak- 'they will meet, but not talk, they will talk, but it wont be substantive, it will be substantive but wont change ground realities, etc etc.'

That sort of diffidence is what characterized so many of our past engagements with our neighbour- In Agra post Kargil and Kandahar, in Kathmandu post the Parliament attack, all the way to Havana post the Mumbai train attacks in 2005. Every time- the outrage and anger over the attacks gives way to the TINA principle- there is no alternative to talking with Pakistan.

In Kathmandu for the SAARC summit in 2002, the refusal of the Ministry of External Affairs to acknowledge any contact took a seriously funny turn. After President Musharraf had walked up and surprised Prime Minister Vajpayee, speculation was rife the two sides would have some kind of official talks. But the MEA wouldn't budge- telling us eager journalists any meeting between the two sides was out of the question. It was finally a Nepali diplomat, fed up with the way India and Pakistan had overshadowed yet another multilateral summit- who gave the story away, giving us an eyewitness account of how Jaswant Singh and Pakistani Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar had met, and had talked for more than an hour. The news broke and spread like shattered glass all over the journalists floor at the hotel. The Pakistani press advisor even organized a press conference- and everyone, piled in and waited in hushed silence for the announcement to come. But it never did- the MEA decided to deny the meeting entirely, and the Pakistani Foreign Office, were too embarrassed to insist it had. The next day of course, grainy pictures of the meeting were out in the press and nothing more needed to be said. Practically every India-Pakistan meeting at an international forum has been marked by just such a build-up, and embarrassment after.

Even so, it's not for lack of trying that India-Pakistan relations have fallen into non-productive patterns. Much of it is just terrible luck with timing. The Agra summit could have led to another round of talks if 9/11 and the parliament attacks hadn't happened. In May 2005, the two sides were ready with an agreement on Siachen- but the Prime Minister's visit to Srinagar for the roundtable was marred by attacks on tourists, and the two sides decided to put off the meeting to July. And then the July meeting of the Foreign secretaries was cancelled after the Mumbai train blasts. In an interview to CNN-IBN in May 2009, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself confirmed the next round of bad luck- "President Musharraf and I had reached a near breakthrough for a non-territorial solution to Kashmir in (early 2007)," he said, "And then it had to be put on hold because of the judicial crisis that gripped Pakistan." And finally, the last round of composite bilateral dialogue- that had been fast-tracked by the two sides, and was hoping to conclude the agreement on Sir Creek was called off after the Mumbai attacks.

"Every time we have reached certain critical stage something like this happens., agrees the new external affairs minister, SM Krishna, also in a recent interview, "26/11 happened at a time when the composite dialogue between India and Pakistan was moving in a particular direction and we were pleased with the developments."

Once again, though, India has decided to pick up the pieces of the shattered puzzle. Despite what it sees as the Pakistani establishment's intransigience, the release of 26/11 accused Hafiz Sayeed, and its on-again, off-again crackdown on terror in Swat, Waziristan and Muridke, Manmohan Singh has gone to Russia with a semblance of neighbourly love, openly declared in Parliament.

Because the prize at the end of the tunnel- a peace with Pakistan, and the possibility of working towards regional prosperity is so worth it. At different times in their Prime Ministerial tenures everyone from Rajiv Gandhi to Narasimha Rao to Gujral and Vajpayee have failed to resist trying to make it happen. With his persistence, Manmohan Singh may yet be the chosen one. With a little bit of luck.