India Summit Extended on Hopeful Note

AGRA, India —  The leaders of India and Pakistan agreed to hold a second day of one-on-one talks here today and to meet again at a follow-up summit in Pakistan, raising hopes that the nuclear enemies may be set to begin a serious search for peace.

Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf were expected to meet alone Sunday for only about 15 minutes, unhindered by Cabinet ministers and officials.

They ended up talking for more than 90 minutes, and then met privately again for about an hour Sunday night, after the Pakistani president and his wife, Sehba, toured the Taj Mahal, a symbol of undying love since the 17th century. The leaders met a third time later Sunday night, along with their delegations.

During the visit to the marble mausoleum, built by Muslim Mogul Emperor Shah Jahan out of devotion to his dead wife, Musharraf said the summit’s first full day had been “fruitful.”

“The talks were held in a very cordial, frank and constructive manner,” according to a brief statement from India’s Foreign Ministry, which Pakistani officials approved.

The two nations’ foreign ministers met late into the night trying to agree on the text of a joint declaration that met Pakistan’s demand for a solution to the Kashmir conflict while addressing India’s claims that Pakistan supports “cross-border terrorism.”

But amid surprisingly upbeat signals from the talks, Pakistani officials cautioned that it was still too early to say whether Vajpayee and Musharraf would even agree to hold a joint news conference at the end of the summit today, let alone agree on specific steps toward lasting peace.

Officials Meet Late Into Night

A decision on the joint appearance still hadn’t been made by the time the two leaders ended Sunday night’s meetings, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Nirupama Rao said. But officials from both delegations met late into the night.

During 54 years of hostility, three wars and 49 summits, Indians and Pakistanis have seen agreements come and go while the key disputes--such as rival claims over the Himalayan territory of Kashmir--remain unresolved.

For a second day in a row, Indian and Pakistani forces on Sunday exchanged small-arms fire at several sites across a cease-fire line in Kashmir. No injuries were reported along the Line of Control, which was created by the 1972 Simla Agreement, one of several past summit accords that have failed to bring peace.

The Indian army claimed it killed at least 34 separatist guerrillas during several clashes within India’s Jammu and Kashmir state. A Kashmiri rebel group in turn said it had killed 11 Indian soldiers in two ambushes. Neither claim could be independently verified.

In the run-up to the Agra summit, Musharraf said he wanted an agreed time frame for resolving the conflict over Kashmir, a predominantly Muslim region that has been a source of tension since the two nations broke free in 1947 from British rule. One-third of Kashmir is under the control of Pakistan, which is mainly Muslim; the larger portion is held by mostly-Hindu India.

Political Cost Could Be High for Musharraf

Successive governments in New Delhi have insisted that the whole territory belongs to India. If Musharraf doesn’t get a deal to start regular negotiations on Kashmir, the political cost could be high in Pakistan, where Kashmir is a deeply emotional issue.

Months ago, Vajpayee was insisting he would never talk to Musharraf, only to make a surprise summit invitation in May to the Pakistani leader, who as an army general took power in a military coup in October 1999 and appointed himself president last month.

So the brief Foreign Ministry statement issued Saturday suggested that the two leaders were getting along much better than many had expected.

“I think the safe conclusion could be that there is understanding and there is positive movement,” the Pakistani military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi, told reporters here.

“But there were no surprises,” he added.

Musharraf invited Vajpayee to a follow-up summit in Pakistan, and the Indian prime minister accepted, though no date or location was set, Qureshi said.

When reporters asked how to interpret the fact that the two leaders continued talks longer than anticipated, Qureshi said the original schedule had included extra time for a second day of discussions, if needed, “and we are sticking to that.”

The leaders, government ministers and bureaucrats held separate meetings on several issues, including what India considers “cross-border terrorism” carried out by Muslim guerrillas in Kashmir with direct support from Pakistan.

Pakistan insists that it provides only moral support to the guerrillas and accuses India of prolonging the conflict by denying Kashmiris a vote on whether the territory should remain part of India, join Pakistan or become independent.

Sushma Swaraj, India’s information minister, said Sunday’s talks touched on trade relations and the need for nuclear “risk-reduction factors” to help avert a nuclear conflict.

India shocked the world May 11, 1998, by saying it had detonated three nuclear devices at its Pokaran test site, 330 miles southwest of New Delhi. Two days later, India announced the detonation of two more low-yield nuclear devices. Pakistan replied with its own test blasts later that month.

The dueling tests shattered international efforts to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and the U.S. quickly imposed punitive economic sanctions on India and Pakistan.

Washington has hinted that it is prepared to lift the remaining sanctions from India this year, and Vajpayee’s surprise invitation to Musharraf was seen, in part, as an effort to speed that process by showing that his nation is trying to reduce tensions in the region.

But Pakistan, once America’s closest ally in South Asia, has a harder case to make for the full lifting of sanctions until Musharraf restores democracy. Meanwhile, his country’s economy continues to sink under the weight of massive foreign debt.

High unemployment among young Pakistani men is one factor behind the growing strength of Muslim hard-liners, whom Musharraf must neutralize if he is to make lasting peace with India.

Prisoner of War Issue Called Most Important

While Vajpayee and Musharraf discussed easing restrictions on bilateral trade, Swaraj called prisoners of war “the most important [issue] of all” on the table. Indian families claim 54 POWs are being held in Pakistani jails 30 years after India’s third war with Pakistan in 1971.

Pakistan’s government denies that it is still holding POWs, but Vajpayee pressed the matter in his private meeting with Musharraf, Swaraj said.

Swaraj added that she had been told these were the issues raised in the meetings but said she did not know specifically how they were addressed.

She didn’t mention Kashmir, which Musharraf called “the core issue” for the summit. The omission angered the Pakistani delegates: In the middle of the night, they issued a stinging criticism of the Indian official’s failure to put Kashmir front and center.

An Indian news Web site, https://www.thenewspapertoday.com, said further talks may be called off due to wrangling over Kashmir, Reuters news agency reported early today.

However, analysts cautioned against reading too much into the eleventh-hour posturing, and the two sides were widely expected to at least issue a joint statement after a morning of talks that would lay out a mechanism for further engagement.

“I don’t think things have substantially changed,” said K. Subrahmanayam, one of India’s foremost security analysts. “They are likely to set up some mechanism to keep the process going on, perhaps hold regular ministerial level talks.”