Click to play videoPrime Minister Manmohan Singh addressed the summit of Non-Aligned nations in Sharm-el Shaikh in Egypt on Wednesday, setting out his agenda for his talks with Pakistan Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani on Thursday. Manmohan Singh said that there must be comprehensive conventions in both countries on terrorism, indicating that terrorism will be the main focus of his talks with Pakistan. However, the neighbour nation is expected to focus on Kashmir and a return to composite dialogue.
The question that was being asked on CNN-IBN's Face The Nation was: Is a dialogue with Pakistan a futile exercise at the moment?
On the panel of experts to try and answer the question were: Strategic Affairs Analyst, Sushant Sareen; former Indian high commissioner to Pakistan, G Parthsarathy; and former Pakistan information minister, Senator Tariq Azeem Khan.
At the beginning of the show, 55 per cent of those who voted in agreed that a dialogue with Pakistan was a futile exercise at the moment, while 45 per cent disagreed.
DIALOGUE FUTILE?
Can there be any kind of breakthrough on Thursday as far as composite dialogue is concerned? Can there be a commitment on fighting terror as far as India is concerned? G Parthsarathy kickstarted the debate by addressing these concerns.
He said, "In January 2004, Pakistan president Musharraf and prime minister Vajpayee issued a statement whereby the then president of Pakistan assured the then prime minister of India that the territory under Pakistani control will not be allowed to be used for terrorist activities against India. Vajpayee, in response to this statement, agreed to resume the composite dialogue. The back channel talks between special envoys went very well, progress was made towards resolving some problems related to Kashmir without of course any change in borders. But as president Musharraf's position weakened and General Kayani's position strengthened, terrorism broke out."
"It is now acknowledged that the attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul was carried out by the Siraj-ud-din Haqqani group of the Taliban, which is based in Pakistan. The Americans allegedly caught General Kayani on a CIA tape - on record - saying that Siraj-ud-din Haqqani is an asset to Pakistan. We ignored this and we paid the price in the form of the terror attack on Mumbai last November," he added.
However, he said one country cannot say that it will not indulge in talks with a neighbour.
"When I was in Pakistan, even during the Kargil war we were talking to Pakistan. But let us not forget that the composite dialogue was premised on Musharraf's assurance. That assurance no longer holds good. Howevr, I believe that the current President of Pakistan, President Asif Ali Zardari has good intentions, but he does not run the show. Whether it is helping the Taliban in Afghanistan or promoting cross-border terrorism, it is all done by the military establishment in that country. Yes, we need contacts with them, but a composite dialogue is something that we will have to wait and see. The Prime Minister of India has said on record that till terrorism does not end, there will be no composite dialogue with Pakistan," he stated.
Parthsarathy said that if composite dialogue was resumed and two months later, another terror attack took place, then India would be back to square one.
CLASH OF NATIONAL IDENTITIES
Another matter of concern was the fact that Pakistan Prime Minister Gilani may not be in any position to give any kind of concrete commitment to India since he has barely any constituency within Pakistan, the military is calling the shots and he is - like President Zardari - barely relevant in Pakistan.
Sushant Sareen agreed to this saying that even if Gilani did give a commitment to India, there was no reason that it would be followed through considering there was a phenomenon of privatisation of jihad in that country.
"Much of the terrorism that emanates on the Indian side from Pakistan comes from a source that practically functions as an auxiliary of the Pakistan army and that source is the Lashkar-e-Toiba. That is one part of the problem. Pakistan always says that it will fight the Taliban, but it says nothing about fighting the Lashkar or the Jaish-e-Mohammad, so there is a contradiction in the kind of posturing that country is doing. Strangely enough, they are using Lashkar as an asset to fight the Taliban," Sareen said.
He said the other problem was that the composite dialogue between India and Pakistan had simply run its course. "There is a larger question here - how do the two countries perceive each other? There was a time after Independence when people used to say India has not conceded Pakistan, but now things have turned and it is Pakistan which is now denying India's existence," Sareen explained.
PAKISTAN'S POINT OF VIEW
Tariq Azeem Khan had said once that it was India which was funding the Taliban and Baitullah Mehsud in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan to destroy the neighbouring country. He again reiterated his statement saying that this was very much the perception in Pakistan.
"You ask anyone on the streets of Pakistan and they will tell you exactly this," he stated, adding, "in Balochistan, this funding has been going for some time now."
Going by Khan's statement, there should be no scope for composite dialogues between the two countries. Faced with this statement, Khan retorted saying, "Let's not try and be holier than thou. We all know what the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) in India is doing, we all know a lot of state elements from Pakistan have been active in Kashmir. We all have to concede these things. Unless we understand each other well, unless we are prepared to fore go and forgive, there can be no composite dialogue. There is no other solution. We have to live with each other. We can't wish each other away. We are neighbours and we have to live together."
Parthsarathy responded to this by saying, "Pakistan has been saying that India is doing all sorts of things from Afghanistan. There are over 1 lakh NATO troops in Afghanistan and the Americans, the British, everyone is clear that the Indian presence in Afghanistan is a stabilising presence. If we were a destabilising force in Afghanistan as the Senator Khan is suggesting, we would get hit very hard on the head by the Americans. This is a fiction of Pakistan's imagination."
He said that there was a very strong constituency for hostility towards India in Pakistan and it was probably growing.
"However, the truth is that nobody in the world believes the Pakistanis. The Americans and the British certainly don't, especially since there are NATO troops in Afghanistan. So if Pakistan wants to keep deluding itself, so be it. They are fighting Baitullah Mehsud but not Siraj-ud-din Haqqani which is operating against Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, so it is a very selective warfare that Pakistan is waging. I am not saying this. The Americans are saying this, Obama's Af-Pak envoy Richard Holbrooke is saying this. So let them just stop playing games. They are not targetting terror groups which are operating against India," he added.
At this point, Senator Khan said that Pakistan would prosecute individuals or groups as and when they got proof against them.
"You want Hafiz Saeed to be prosecuted, Americans want someone else to be prosecuted, but when Pakistan says we want Baitullah Mehsud, then the drones become unserviceable and there are low clouds and no one can attack. So everybody is being very selective," he said.
However, one cannot discount what President Zardari said in a statement recently that 'the terrorists of today were the heroes of Pakistan until 9/11 happened and that Pakistan has had a policy of encouraging terrorist groups to secure its own national objectives'.
Senator Khan responded to this saying, "What we must remember is that the Mujahideen of 1979 to 1989, who subsequently became the Taliban and terrorists, are the same people who were being funded, aided, trained by Americans - CIA - by the British - MI6 - and everybody else. India does not have these links because at that time India was in the Russian axis. It is only recently that India has developed this love for the United States. And at that time, because we were fighting the Russians, we were getting all help and aid and everyone was patting our backs, but now these people want us to forget history and have left this heavy burden on us. These western countries left these people as well as the Mujahideen to their fate and just disappeared."
"We had to deal with these people and we had no choice but to recognise the Taliban when it took over Afghanistan," he added.
About Jaish and Lashkar, he said that both organisations were banned in Pakistan. "The problem is that these people disappear and then reappear with a different name. A majority of Pakistanis want to get along with Indians, we want peace in this region, not just for India's sake but for Pakistan's sake too," he said.
COMPOSITE DIALOGUE A TALL ORDER?
However, the question was whether the Pakistan army was included in the large peace constituency which Senator Khan talked about. Sushant Sareen said the Pakistan army would be interested in peace but on its own terms, and unfortunately, those terms are not going to be easy for them to get.
"Everybody wants peace but what is the basis on which a peace deal is going to be struck?" he wanted to know.
Parthsarathy interrupted at this point saying, "I want to make a few things clear. The Americans did not create Taliban, but they are responsible for bringing in Islamic radicalism to Pakistan by starting the seven-party alliance and by funding the Jamaat-e-Islami during the Afghan jihad. The Taliban was a creation of Major General Nasrullah Babbar and of Maulana Fazlur Rahman. So it was created by Pakistan."
"As far as I am concerned though, we have to talk to the Pakistanis. The composite dialogue process cannot start because it is premised on an end to terrorism. If you ask me, I want to see the Pakistan army on the dialogue table as well as the Director General of the ISI," he concluded the discussion by saying.
FINAL SMS/WEB POLL: Is a dialogue with Pakistan a futile exercise at the moment?
Yes: 57 per cent
No: 43 per cent
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