At long last, a firm step forward

The meeting in Bhutan between the two Prime Ministers has opened a path, but India and Pakistan are not out of the woods yet...







30 April 2010
The Hindu

At long last, a firm step forward

Siddharth Varadarajan

The history of India-Pakistan relations is full of examples of leaders from both countries travelling to distant points on the globe — from Tashkent and New York to Sharm el-Sheikh and Havana — to meet each other only to end up standing still. Meetings held in the subcontinent, on the other hand, have invariably led to breakthroughs, big and small. Think Simla and Lahore, Islamabad and Delhi. Each of these encounters produced conceptual breakthroughs that briefly carried some promise of momentum before being swamped by the forces of inertia, dead habit, treachery or bad faith that are the constants in this cursed relationship.

To the list of promising South Asian summits can now be added the name of Thimphu, where Manmohan Singh and Yusuf Raza Gilani met on Thursday. Defying naysayers within their respective establishments and wider strategic communities, the two Prime Ministers crafted a simple but elegant formula for breaking the current impasse, thereby ensuring that the process of engagement — stuck for several months — now has some chance of moving ahead. The Foreign Secretaries and Foreign Ministers have been tasked with meeting each other to assess the current state of the relationship and identify the reasons for the trust deficit. This is to be the first step in what will eventually lead to a dialogue process aimed at discussing and resolving all outstanding issues and disputes.

With the “composite” nature of the dialogue becoming a political stumbling block, India and Pakistan wisely decided to transcend the confines of nomenclature. The process they engage in may eventually take the form of the composite dialogue or, more likely, improve upon it. But that will depend on two factors, both equally important: the results of the review the two sides conduct, and their ability to reduce the trust deficit.

For India, the restoration of trust depends on very simple metrics. New Delhi's overarching priority is to get Islamabad to honour its commitment to prevent terrorists from using Pakistani territory to launch attacks on India. Mr. Gilani reiterated this promise in Bhutan but the Manmohan Singh government will need more than mere words in order to convince sceptics at home. It needs the seven Lashkar-e-Taiba men currently on trial in Rawalpindi for their involvement in the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai punished. And it needs credible evidence that anti-India terrorist organisations like the LeT and their leadership no longer have the freedom to operate. Infiltration levels in the valley, which have been rising over the past few months, also need to fall.

Even within the constraints of what Pakistan's increasingly independent judicial system is prepared to accept, there is a lot more that the Pakistani government can and must do to address Indian concerns. The current thaw assumes the absence of engagement is making it easier for the military establishment in Pakistan to justify the continuation of its links with anti-Indian extremists. Prime Minister Singh's decision to agree to the resumption of dialogue is based on the principle of trust but verify. If terrorist groups continue to speak and operate with impunity, chances are any substantive talks the two sides begin on issues like Kashmir or Siachen will flounder. After all, the oxygen of trust is needed to scale those daunting heights, which no leader has managed to ascend so far. As for water, it is hard to imagine India agreeing to surrender rights given to it by the Indus Water Treaty or shouldering obligations not enumerated there — which is essentially what Pakistan would like it to do — in the absence of trust and normality. Putting the terrorists out of business is, therefore, very much in Pakistan's interest.

As the two sides review the relationship, they will try and come up with a framework that can build on what the composite dialogue has accomplished so far while transcending its limitations. It is clear, for example, that bureaucrats and officials have done all they could to resolve Sir Creek and Siachen and that those discussions have reached the stage where a dialogue between politically-empowered envoys is the only way a settlement can be produced. Similarly on the “core issue” of Jammu and Kashmir, the back channel has proved to be a more effective platform for serious negotiation than the front channel operated by the two Foreign Secretaries. Should the Kashmir dialogue, too, be made political?

An obstacle here, of course, is that the Pakistani side appears to have repudiated the understandings reached between 2004-2007 on maintaining the territorial status quo, making borders irrelevant, demilitarising the area and crafting administrative links between the two parts of Kashmir. But even that is not the biggest problem since either party is well within its right to walk away from the back channel. Today, however, the real challenge in reviving and working the back channel is the lack of clarity in Islamabad about who Riaz Mohammed Khan — the designated counterpart of Satinder Lambah — will report to.

Political circumstances allowed General Musharraf to work within the dictum of l'etat c'est moi and India dealt with him as such. But today there is no clarity. Depending on how the wider internal politics in Pakistan plays out over the next year, some clarity may emerge. It is in India's long-term interest that democracy in Pakistan gets stabilised and empowered. This means, every effort must be made to work with Prime Minister Gilani and his government, while keeping lines of communication open with other political parties and leaders. There have also been suggestions in several high-level Track-II meetings that a dialogue between the intelligence chiefs of both countries could serve a useful purpose. These are issues that need to be discussed and evaluated when the Foreign Secretaries and Ministers take stock of where the relationship stands.

Alongside this evolving process, forward movement on trade, investment and energy sector cooperation would produce mutual gains that could enlarge the constituency for peace in both countries. None of this will work, however, if the leadership in India and Pakistan succumbs to the temptation of playing to domestic galleries. Going by the record of the past few years, terrorists will attempt to destroy this latest attempt to restart the dialogue. Acting with maturity and restraint in the face of provocation will pay more dividends in the long run. In Thimphu, both Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao and Pakistani Foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi struck the right tone even when “nationalist” questions were thrown at them. If the dialogue process is to survive the critical early months, leaders and officials up and down the food chain in India and Pakistan need to exercise great caution.

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Time to end the impasse with Pakistan

If India really believes dialogue is the way forward, it should not allow a disagreement over form or nomenclature to come in the way.








26 April 2010
The Hindu

Time to end the impasse with Pakistan

Siddharth Varadarajan

Forget Kashmir and terrorism or even Afghanistan and water, the current stalemate between India and Pakistan is all down to one word. Both countries publicly say that Dialogue is the only way forward. Yet each is paralysed by the name 'Composite'. New Delhi is so allergic to it that it will not accept its use, while Islamabad has become so attached to the C word that it insists there can be nothing else.

This Indian allergy and Pakistani attachment is paradoxical, since the composite dialogue approach has suited India more than it has Pakistan. Under the guise of moving ahead simultaneously on all issues, the framework has allowed progress on trade and other subjects considered important by New Delhi, even as the status quo on major disputes like Kashmir and Siachen --key concerns for Islamabad -- has held. Of course, the dialogue did not end cross-border terrorism or extinguish the links between the Pakistani security agencies and violent extremism as some on the Indian side might have hoped. But that was always an improbable shot given the DNA of the Pakistani establishment. Over time, India has realised the best way to deal with the threat of terror is by strengthening its internal capabilities while utilising engagement as a lever for influencing Pakistan's behaviour over the long run.

The two most important issues for the Pakistani side today -- going by its public statements -- are Kashmir and water. But here's the paradox: the composite dialogue, from its point of view, has produced no forward movement whatsoever on these two fronts. In four and a half rounds of talks within that framework, the total amount of time spent by the two foreign secretaries in discussing the Kashmir dispute has perhaps been 10 hours. During which neither side did anything beyond restating its national positions. As for water, it does not even figure as a separate head under this format. The only water-related dispute covered by the composite dialogue is the Tulbul navigation project, also known as the Wullar barrage. There, too, progress has been insignificant.

In contrast to the composite dialogue framework, the back channel between Satinder Lambah and Tariq Aziz was far more effective and productive. Between 2004 and 2007, the two special envoys, who reported directly to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and General Pervez Musharraf respectively, discussed Kashmir for hundreds of hours. More significantly, their exertions produced a framework solution that was cleared on the Indian side by the Cabinet Committee on Security and on the Pakistani side by the Corps Commanders conference, before domestic political difficulties triggered by his dismissal of the chief justice forced Musharraf to back off. As for water, the Indus Water Commissioners have been meeting continuously for more than 40 years and their forum represents the best platform for Pakistan because all the Indian projects it opposes on the Indus, Chenab and Jhelum rivers can be referred to an outside arbitrator whose decisions are final and binding. Compared to such a powerful dispute resolution mechanism, the existing dialogue framework is surely inferior. And yet, even though Islamabad's best shot at making progress on water and Kashmir lies outside the composite dialogue, it has got locked into a situation where it is refusing any form of engagement or talks other than that.

Now let's consider India. The Indian position has been in a state of flux since it suspended the composite dialogue following the terrorist attacks on Mumbai in November 2008. Broadly speaking, however, India has maintained that there can be no resumption of the composite dialogue till Pakistan moves to punish the Mumbai conspirators and dismantles the "infrastructure of terror" on its soil. In September last year, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made a distinction between "meaningful dialogue" on disputes, which would have to await Pakistani action on terrorism, and talks on "humanitarian and other issues." Since then, the Indian position has evolved further. When Pakistan's Foreign Secretary, Salman Bashir, was invited to Delhi in February 2010, India clarified that while its own priority was terrorism, it was ready to discuss all issues with Pakistan. That is still the official Indian position. At a press conference on April 22, Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao said dialogue "represents a concrete method to move forward in our relationship ... [It] is always useful. It helps clear the atmosphere and especially between neighbours, such as India and Pakistan. Dialogue is really the way forward".

But if India believes dialogue "is really the way forward", why is it unable to accept Pakistan's call for the "composite" dialogue to be resumed? The paradox here is that from the traditional Indian perspective, the composite dialogue has worked pretty well. Discussions on Kashmir have not led to any change in the territorial status quo but have provided a cover for India to move ahead with other parts of the bilateral agenda that suit it more, like trade and cross-border confidence-building measures. And if the Indian side is opposed to talks on the 'water issue', the composite framework of dialogue is ideal because water does not figure as a standalone topic under any of the subject heads. Despite this, India is the one saying no to 'composite' dialogue.

India suspended the composite dialogue in order to get Pakistan to take action against terrorism. Some action has been taken but the Manmohan Singh government rightly believes that Pakistan can and must do more. It also knows the continued absence of dialogue is unlikely to produce greater action on the terrorism front and might even be counter-productive. Yet it fears the "resumption" of the suspended dialogue will be seen as a sign of weakness by the Opposition.

India's options have been further complicated by the hardening of the Pakistani position on cooperation and dialogue since November 2009, when Barack Obama's new AfPak policy dealt the military establishment in Rawalpindi a stronger hand in the Afghan endgame. Even as the Pakistan army has stepped up its offensive against the Tehreek-e-Taliban and, to a lesser extent, anti-American extremists on its border with Afghanistan, it has played up the 'India threat' card to balance the perception that it is too subservient to the U.S. The rhetoric on water, the Azm-e-Nau III exercises, the loosening of the leash on Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed and the increase in infiltration across the Line of Control are all evidence of the hardening of the Pakistani military's attitude. At the same time, the domestic political situation in Pakistan is fluid. The 18th amendment to the constitution has opened up the possibility of the civilian government and the provinces strengthening themselves vis-a-vis the military. The revival of the Benazir Bhutto assassination case in the wake of the recent U.N. report could also provide political ammunition against the establishment.

In the run up to this week's Saarc summit in Bhutan, where Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will meet Yusuf Raza Gilani on the sidelines, Indian officials are resigned to keeping the bilateral relationship in a 'holding pattern.' Their logic is that if relations cannot improve, then they should not be allowed to deteriorate either. As a short-term strategy, the holding pattern strategy works fine. There are always small things that can be done at that level too. But an aeroplane cannot circle the runway endlessly. The longer it is up in the air, the greater is the likelihood of a disastrous descent. That is why planning for an orderly landing is a much better strategy.

In Thimphu, Dr. Singh must try and find a way of doing that. One possibility is for the two prime ministers to task their foreign secretaries with reviewing what has been accomplished on the terrorism front as well as in the last few rounds of the composite dialogue, with a view to expediting the resolution of existing problems and disputes. Such a mandate would foreground the necessity of a dialogue addressing all outstanding issues while sidestepping, for the moment, any nomenclatural disagreement. It would accomplish the stated Indian objective while allowing Mr. Gilani to return without having surrendered Islamabad's stand on the "resumption" of the composite dialogue. Parallel to this process, the Prime Minister should meet with the leaders of all major political parties in order to explain the reasons why India and Pakistan need to end the current stalemate. Finally, a strict moratorium on grandstanding and posturing, finger-pointing and name-calling is necessary. When the Prime Minister is directly crafting India's approach to Pakistan, ministers, officials and anonymous 'sources' must not confuse the public with contradictory messages and statements.

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India resigned to ‘holding pattern’ with Pakistan

On the even of the Saarc summit in Bhutan, India and Pakistan are, as Dr. Seuss, would put it, still in The Waiting Place ...

You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.
Some windows are lighted. But mostly they're darked.
A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin!
Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in?
How much can you lose? How much can you win?
And IF you go in, should you turn left or right...
or right-and-three-quarters?
Or, maybe, not quite?
Or go around back and sneak in from behind?
Simple it's not, I'm afraid you will find,
for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.

You can get so confused
that you'll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place ...

22 April 2010
The Hindu

India resigned to ‘holding pattern’ with Pakistan

Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi: With the SAARC summit only a week away, and India and Pakistan still unable to agree on talks about talks, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s meeting with his Pakistani counterpart on the sidelines of Thimphu will have the limited but important aim of preventing further deterioration in an already fraught relationship, Indian officials say.

“What we are really looking at is a holding pattern”, a senior official told The Hindu, using the aviation industry phrase for when an aircraft circles around an airport at a fixed altitude awaiting clearance to land. “It is clear that they are not ready to move forward. Nor, quite frankly, are we, until we see some movement on the issues we have raised".

Pakistan wants nothing short of the resumption of the composite dialogue. It has refused to invite Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao to make a return visit to Islamabad nearly two months after its foreign secretary, Salman Bashir, came to Delhi, unless India accepts this condition. On its part, India says resumption is not possible till more is done on the terrorism front but is willing to discuss “humanitarian and other issues”. Under the circumstances, said the official, the best Dr. Singh can hope for from his Bhutan meeting with Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani is to keep alive the idea of engagement, even if Islamabad is not in a position to deliver on terrorism or discuss the possibility of incremental steps forward.

“It’s sad, really, because there are lots of little things that you could do together even now”, the official said. Indian proposals on enhancing cross-LoC trade have not been answered and meetings of business chambers from both sides have not been held. Though the Indian side has not helped matters with its non-tariff barriers, the official said Islamabad’s reluctance to let the chambers meet means solutions to the complaints of Pakistani businessmen cannot be found.

The official mentioned the ongoing visit to India of Pakistan’s population minister, Firdous Ashiq Awan. “We indicated to them that if they wanted, we were ready to build in some political content to her visit. But they were not interested. Our sense is that nobody in their system wants to take the risk of engaging with India”, he said. The official also mentioned Pakistani interior minister Rehman Malik’s recent meeting with visiting Indian journalists. “He was willing to brief them on how the trial of 26/11 suspects has progressed. But [Indian high commissioner] Sharad [Sabharwal] has not heard from him about this since September.”

But if the prospect for gains in Thimphu is close to zero, not meeting Mr. Gilani, or meeting him too perfunctorily, could actually damage relations between the two countries, another official said, explaining the Prime Minister’s dilemma. The Pakistani side has a similar assessment of what is at stake. Neither side is looking for a joint statement but some minimum preparation is considered necessary. “Both of us know the drill”, the senior official said. Asked for his assessment, a senior Pakistani diplomat said it was likely that the two foreign secretaries would hurriedly sit down before their principals meet to sketch out the ground rules.

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The perils of political paratrooping

In Shashi Tharoor's rise and fall, a Congress attempt to woo middle class ...










20 April 2010
The Hindu

NEWS ANALYSIS
The perils of political paratrooping

Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi: The petit-bourgeois mind is superficial and fickle. It is awe struck by the accumulation and consumption that go on in the highest echelons of society, even if outside the borderlines of legality and good taste. But it is repulsed and outraged when forced to confront the tawdriness and venality on which the life it aspires to is built.

Framed by these two extremes, the long-shot and the close-up, the rise and fall of Shashi Tharoor is a cautionary tale about the dangers of entering public life through the constituency of the middle class. The ‘perils of political paratrooping' is how a former colleague of the erstwhile junior minister pithily described Mr. Tharoor's fate when asked for his assessment by The Hindu. What made his jump even more dangerous was that it was made without the safety net that grassroot experience or backroom goodwill provides. By the standards of Indian politics, his impropriety in the IPL affair was relatively minor; but unlike others whose warts catch the glare of the arclights from time to time, there was nobody willing to pad up for him when the media drew blood. Fatally injured, he stood his ground just a moment too long. Had he walked back to the pavilion unprompted, he might have survived to play a second innings. But he didn't do that. Which is why his political career is today at an end.

This was not the way things were meant to be. A month ago, Mr. Tharoor had successfully weathered the latest of several controversies triggered by his infelicitously timed or worded statements. It was almost as if he had a charmed life. “Mark my words”, a former External Affairs Minister who knows a thing or two about the ways of the Congress party told this reporter over lunch in March. “When Rahul Gandhi becomes Prime Minister, Shashi will be his EAM. He just has to lie low, play a long innings.”

In the run-up to the 2009 elections, the Congress and Shashi Tharoor were happy to court each other. Mr. Tharoor had spent a lifetime as a highly visible and voluble international servant and the thought of toiling away in anonymity as a lobbyist for Afras Ventures in Dubai must have seemed pretty unappetising. He joined the Congress and, with the blessings of Sonia Gandhi, got the ticket for the prestigious Thiruvananthapuram seat. The fact that he chose to enter politics through the heat and dust of an actual election campaign, rather than through the Rajya Sabha, like most other middle class icons, further endeared him to his constituency.

On their part, Congress leaders, and particularly Ms. Gandhi, saw in the foppish and articulate former United Nations official a totem to woo back the middle class. For the Congress president, this goal had been a key element of her politics since at least 2000.

Beginning with the Narasimha Rao-Chandraswami link and the infamous hawala diary of 1995, the middle class, which had stuck with the Congress as the ‘natural party of governance' through most of the post-independence period, began to cast around for alternatives. The opportunism of the party in toppling the United Front government in 1998 and then trying to cobble together the magical figure of 272 in 1999 further sullied its reputation. Within five years of losing power at the Centre, the Congress managed to completely lose the mantle of being a party of stability and decency, ceding that space to the Bharatiya Janata Party. Improbable though it seems now, all of these qualities so dear to the middle class got neatly channelled around the personality of Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

The Congress won the 2004 elections for a variety of reasons but Ms. Gandhi was clear that it could stay in power only if it kept recharging its middle class credentials. The presence of Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister was vital but the party saw in 2009 the need to go one step further, bringing in newer and younger faces, fresh and articulate. Within that overall strategy, Mr. Tharoor had an appeal that was irresistible. Globally connected but capable of acquiring local anchorage, he was seen as an excellent candidate for a party keen to project ‘merit', ‘talent' and civil debate over the usual din of caste, money power and goondaism.

Though Mr. Tharoor's entry into Parliament and government caused heartburn, few could grudge the positive energy he brought to the job. As a well-known face on the international circuit because of his long years at the UN secretariat, the junior minister invariably charmed all foreign leaders he interacted with. The fact that he could slip effortlessly into French while talking to Ivorien or Togolese ministers or journalists was a bonus for Indian diplomacy.

Shashi Tharoor's one failing as a minister was the need he felt for constant public articulation. The opposition and even his party colleagues — most of them humourless apparatchiks — misunderstood or even distorted his messages on Twitter. But his virtual constituents revelled in his irreverence. Such was his five-star appeal that the Indian and diasporic middle class forgave Shashi Tharoor for living in an expensive hotel for months on end, even when it emerged that he tried very hard to have the government pay for his stay there. Who paid his bills and why were questions they never really sought an answer to. In hindsight, that episode was an early pointer to the outsider's disdain for the rules of Indian politics. A disdain that ended in the controversy over the Rs. 70 crore worth of ‘sweat equity' given to his girlfriend, Sunanda Pushkar, for the IPL Kochi team. The Hindi channels are calling it ‘haseena ka paseena.' Mr. Tharoor has protested his innocence. Only a thorough investigation will reveal the truth. But for the Congress, matters had crossed a point of no return. It is one thing to be accused of speaking out of turn, another to be accused of corruption. Mr. Tharoor's indiscretions the Congress could live with, his impropriety it could not. The party which brought him into politics to propitiate the middle class now realised it had to throw him out in a final act of appeasement. But only if it moves to clean the wider rot that is the IPL will it emerge from this fiasco with its image intact.

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INTERVIEW: ‘A ceasefire will create conducive atmosphere for talks'

In an exclusive interview to The Hindu, Azad, Spokesperson of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), answers in writing questions on his party's attitude to dialogue with the Union government ...






14 April
The Hindu

‘A ceasefire will create conducive atmosphere for talks'

Siddharth Varadarajan

The written questions were sent in the second week of March and the answers received at the end of the month. The 11,400-word text of the interview is available at The Hindu's website. An edited excerpt:

There have been statements in recent months by government and Maoist leaders saying they favour talks but each side seems to lack seriousness. There has also been an element of theatre, with Kishenji and P. Chidambaram exchanging statements through the media. Could you clarify whether Kishenji's statements can be treated as authoritative pronouncements of the CPI (Maoist) central leadership in pursuance of a national strategy? Or are these tactical announcements by him keeping only the specifics of the West Bengal situation in mind.

Our party leadership has been issuing statements from time to time in response to the government's dubious offer of talks. But to generalise that there is lack of seriousness on both sides does not correspond to reality. To an observer, exchanging statements through the media does sound a bit theatrical. But the stark fact is the lack of seriousness has been the hallmark of the government, particularly of P. Chidambaram. It is Mr. Chidambaram who has been enacting a drama in the past four months, particularly ever since his amusing 72-hour-abjure-violence diktat to the CPI (Maoist) last November. As regards Kishenji's statements, they should be seen with a positive attitude, not with cynicism. Though our Central Committee has not discussed our specific strategy with regard to talks with the government at the current juncture, as a Polit Bureau member, Comrade Kishenji had taken the initiative and made a concrete proposal for a ceasefire. Whether his statements are the official pronouncements of our Central Committee is not the point of debate here. What is important is the attitude of the government to such an offer in the first place. Our Central Committee has no objection to his proposal for a ceasefire.

Mr. Chidambaram says the Maoists should “abjure violence and say they are prepared for talks… I would like no ifs, no buts and no conditions.” Now ‘to abjure' can mean to renounce or forswear violence, or even to avoid violence, i.e. a ceasefire. What is your understanding of Mr. Chidambaram's formulation?

This is a pertinent question as no one knows exactly what Mr. Chidambaram wants to convey. Some interpret his statement to mean Maoists should lay down arms. Some say it means unilateral renunciation of violence by Maoists. Yet others say what this could mean is a cessation of hostilities by both sides without any conditions attached. The Home Minister himself displayed his split personality, not knowing what exactly he wants when he says Maoists should “abjure violence.” To a layman this proposal obviously implies that the State too would automatically put a stop to its inhuman atrocities on the adivasis, Maoist revolutionaries, and their sympathisers. But not so to our Home Minister! When you ask what our understanding of Mr. Chidambaram's formulation is, our answer is: the real intent is not a ceasefire between the government and the Maoists, like that with the NSCN, but an absurd demand for a unilateral renunciation of violence by the Maoists. Mr. Chidambaram wants the Maoists to surrender. Or else his paramilitary juggernaut would crush the people and the Maoists under its wheels. While repeating that he never wanted the Maoists to lay down arms — as if he had generously given a big concession — he comes up with an even more atrocious proposal: Maoists should abjure violence while his lawless forces continue their rampage creating more Gachampallis, Gompads, and so on. Not a word does he utter even as inhuman atrocities by his forces are brought to light by magazines like Tehelka, Outlook, and, to an extent, some papers like yours.

The Maoists also have their preconditions. In a recent interview to Jan Myrdal and Gautam Navlakha, Ganapathi listed three demands for any kind of talks: “1. All-out war has to be withdrawn; 2. The ban on the Party and Mass Organisations has to be lifted; 3. Illegal detention and torture of comrades has to be stopped and they be immediately released.” He added that if these demands are met, then the same leaders who are released from jails would lead and represent the Party in talks. Are these realistic preconditions? For example, the “all out war” can be suspended first before it is “withdrawn”, i.e. a ceasefire, so why insist on its withdrawal at the outset? Are you asking for a ceasefire or something more than that?

I concur with the logic of your arguments. It is logically a valid argument that such demands could be resolved in the course of actual talks and not as a precondition for talks. But you must also understand the spirit of what Comrade Ganapathi said. What he meant when he said the government should withdraw its all-out war is nothing but a suspension of its war, or in other words, mutual ceasefire. Let there be no confusion in this regard. What Chidambaram wants is a unilateral ceasefire by Maoists while the state continues its brutal campaign of terror. On the contrary, what the CPI (Maoist) wants is a cessation of hostilities by both sides simultaneously. This is the meaning of the first point. A ceasefire by both sides cannot be called a precondition. It is but an expression of the willingness on the part of both sides engaged in war to create a conducive atmosphere for going to the next step of talks.

Ganapathi also wants the ban on the party and its mass organisations lifted and prisoners released. Usually in negotiations of this kind, the lifting of a ban is one of the objects of talks rather than a precondition. And the release of political prisoners an intermediate step. Is the Maoist party not putting the cart before the horse?

If peaceful legal work has to be done by Maoists as desired by several organisations and members of civil society, then lifting of the ban becomes a pre-requisite. Without lifting the ban on the party and mass organisations, how can we organise legal struggles, meetings etc. in our name? If we do so, will these not be dubbed as illegal as they are led by a banned party? According to us, the ban itself is an authoritarian, undemocratic, and fascist act. Hence the demand for the lifting of the ban is a legitimate demand, and, if fulfilled, will go a long way in promoting open democratic forms of struggles and creating a conducive atmosphere for a dialogue. What Comrade Ganapathi had asked for is that the government should adhere to the Indian Constitution and put an end to the illegal murders in the name of encounters, tortures, and arrests. We must include the term ‘murders,' which is missing in the third point. There is nothing wrong or unreasonable in asking the government to stick to its own Constitution. As regards the release of political prisoners, this could be an intermediate step as far as the nature of the demand is concerned. However, to hold talks it is necessary for the government to release some leaders. Or else, there would be none to talk to since the entire party is illegal. We cannot bring any of our leaders overground for the purpose of talks.

What do the Maoists hope to achieve with talks? Are you only looking to buy time and regroup yourselves — which is what the government said you did during the aborted dialogue in Andhra Pradesh? Or is it part of a more general re-evaluation of the political strategy of the party, one which may see it emerge as an overground political formation engaged in open, legal activities and struggles, and perhaps even entering the electoral fray directly or indirectly at various levels in the kind of “multiparty competition” that Prachanda says is necessary for the communist movement?

The proposal of talks is neither a ploy to buy time or regroup ourselves, nor is it a part of the general re-evaluation of the political strategy of the party that could lead to its coming overground, entering the electoral fray and multi-party competition as in Nepal. You asked me what we want to achieve with talks. My one sentence answer is: we want to achieve whatever is possible for the betterment of people's lives without compromising on our political programme of new democratic revolution and strategy of protracted people's war. People have a right to enjoy whatever is guaranteed under the Indian Constitution, however nominal and limited these provisions are. And the government is duty-bound to implement the provisions of the Constitution. We hope the talks would raise the overall consciousness of the oppressed people about their fundamental rights and rally them to fight for their rights. Talks will also expose the government's hypocrisy, duplicity, and its authoritarian and extra-constitutional rule that violates whatever is guaranteed by the Constitution. So talks would help in exposing the government's callous attitude to the people and may help in bringing about reforms, however limited they may be. Another important reason is that talks will give some respite to the people who are oppressed and suppressed under the jack-boots of the Indian state and state-sponsored terrorist organisations like the Salwa Judum, Maa Danteswari Swabhiman Manch, Sendra, Nagarik Suraksha Samiti, Shanti Sena, Harmad Bahini, and so on.

Would the Maoists be prepared to establish their bona fides on the question of talks by announcing a unilateral ceasefire or perhaps the non-initiation of combat operations (NICO) after a particular date so as to facilitate the process of dialogue?

It is quite strange to see intellectuals like you asking the Maoists to declare a unilateral ceasefire when the heavily armed Indian state is carrying out its brutal armed offensive and counter-revolutionary war. How would unilateral announcement of ceasefire or NICO after a particular date establish the bona fides of our party on the question of talks? What purpose would such an act serve? It is incomprehensible to me why we are asked to “display this generosity” towards an enemy who has the least concern for the welfare of the people. And how would this “generous Gandhian act” on our part facilitate the process of dialogue with the megalomaniacs in the Home Ministry who do not spare even non-violent Gandhian social activists working in Dantewada and other places?

The Maoists are engaging in armed struggle but have not hesitated to use violence against non-combatants. The beheading of a policeman, Francis Induvar, while in Maoist captivity, was a blatant violation of civilised norms and of international humanitarian law, which the Maoists, like the Government, are obliged to adhere to. If civil society condemns the security forces for killing civilians in Chhattisgarh and elsewhere and demands that the guilty be punished, it has an equal right to condemn the Maoists whenever they commit such crimes.

Our attempt will always be to target the enemy who is engaged in war against us. Non-combatants are generally avoided. But what about the intelligence officials and police informers who collect information about the movement of Maoists and cause immense damage to the movement? It is true most of them do not carry arms openly or are unarmed. What to do with them? If we just leave them they would continue to cause damage to the party and movement. If we punish them, there is a furore from the media and civil society. Caught between the devil and the deep sea! Our general practice is to conduct a trial in a people's court wherever that is possible and proceed in accordance with the decision of the people. Where it is not possible to hold the people's court due to the intensity of repression we conduct investigation, take the opinion of the people and give appropriate punishment.

I agree there is no place for cruelty while giving out punishments. I had clarified this in one of my earlier interviews while referring to the case of Francis Induvar. But it is made into a big issue by the media when a thousand beheadings took place in the past five years by the police-paramilitary and Salwa Judum goons. Do you really think the government is adhering to the law?

Just recently, two of our party leaders — Comrades Shakhamuri Appa Rao and Kondal Reddy — were abducted from Chennai and Pune respectively by the APSIB and the Central Intelligence officials and were murdered in cold blood in the early hours of 12th March. What is civil society doing when such cold-blooded murders are taking place in police custody? When our comrades hear of these cold-blooded murders committed by the APSIB or other officials of the state, it is natural that their blood would boil and they will not bat an eye-lid to hack any of the perpetrators of these inhuman crimes, say a man from APSIB or Grey Hounds, to pieces if he fell into their hands.

In the war zone, the passions run with such intensity, which one cannot even imagine in other areas or under normal circumstances. Could someone who has seen women being raped and murdered, children and old men being murdered after hacking them to pieces in the killing fields of Dantewada and Bijapur, ever give a thought to your so-called non-existent international laws when the perpetrator of such crimes happens to fall into their hands? The pent-up anger of the masses is so intense that even the party general secretary will perhaps fail to control the fury of the adivasi masses when they lay their hands on their tormentors.

Why has the CPI (Maoist) decided to reach out through the columns of a newspaper to clarify its views on the issue of a ceasefire and talks?

I think the media can play a role in carrying the views of a banned party to the government and the people at large, particularly at a time when facts regarding our party are distorted, misinterpreted, and obfuscated in a meticulously planned manner. And when there is no scope for a dialogue given the determination of the rulers to carry out their pre-programmed war offensive, we think it appropriate to reach out to the people at large through the media too. I thank The Hindu for the thought-provoking and incisive questions it has placed before our party. We look forward to more of such interaction with the media in future.

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Tharoor's IPL googly is hat-trick for Manmohan

From Hua Hin to Riyadh to Washington and Brasilia, Shashi Tharoor has always brought bad luck to the Prime Minister on his foreign tours...

14 April 2010
The Hindu

Tharoor's IPL googly is hat-trick for Manmohan

Siddharth Varadarajan

Washington: Whatever the facts of the dispute between Shashi Tharoor and Lalit Modi, this is the third time that a controversy surrounding the junior foreign minister has threatened to overshadow the Prime Minister during an important overseas visit.

Halfway through Manmohan Singh's ongoing visit to the U.S. and Brazil for the Nuclear Security, BRIC and IBSA summits, the media back home have already turned their attention to Mr. Tharoor, much to the irritation of the travelling delegation.

On Tuesday night, TV channels devoted virtually all their time to the Tharoor-IPL issue, tuning out what the Prime Minister had to say in Washington.

In February this year, Mr. Tharoor's on-the-record comments to Indian reporters during an informal dinner hosted by the Indian ambassador in Riyadh triggered a controversy over his use of the word ‘interlocutor.' Though PMO officials agree that the media erred in alleging that he had called for Saudi ‘mediation' with Pakistan, they say the junior minister invited the controversy upon himself and that he should not have spoken to the press in the first place during the Prime Minister's visit.

Last September, part of the Prime Minister's press conference during the India-Asean summit was spent in firefighting after Mr. Tharoor's tweets about travelling in ‘cattle-class' triggered a political controversy back home.

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Nuclear Summit adopts communiqué and plan of work

Aim is to promote effective security of nuclear materials worldwide ...





14 April 2010
The Hindu

Nuclear Summit adopts communiqué and plan of work

Siddharth Varadarajan

Washington: The 47-nation Nuclear Security Summit ended here on Tuesday with the adoption of a short final communiqué and seven page work plan aimed at promoting the effective security of nuclear materials worldwide.

The communiqué includes general commitments while the more specific work plan constitutes a political commitment by participating countries to carry out applicable measures, on a voluntary basis, in all aspects of the storage, use, transportation and disposal of nuclear materials.

Unlike most nuclear documents springing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty system, the Washington communiqué makes no legal distinction between nuclear weapon states and the rest. Nor is there any reference to the NPT. Instead, it reaffirms the fundamental responsibility of States, consistent with their international obligations, to maintain effective security of all nuclear materials. These materials are defined as including “nuclear materials used in nuclear weapons, and nuclear facilities under their control.”

The document calls for wider support for existing international instruments on nuclear security such as the 1979 Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material and its 2005 amendment, the Convention on the Suppression of Nuclear Terrorism.

There is no reference in the documents to U.N. Security Council Resolution 1887 on nuclear security and non-proliferation, passed last year at the urging or U.S. President Barack Obama. Indian officials say the reference in that to NPT adherence meant it could not be included in the communiqué.

But the communiqué and work plan have words of support for the G8-led Global Partnership against the Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction. This initiative includes the annual G8 statements on non-proliferation, the last of which sought to prevent India from accessing enrichment and reprocessing technologies.

The work plan covers a wide range of issues from nuclear detection and forensics to exchange of information to detect and prevent illicit nuclear trafficking, and the promotion of nuclear security culture.

The document recognises that highly enriched uranium (HEU) and separated plutonium — basic ingredients of a nuclear weapon — require special precautions and that participating countries agree to “promote measures to secure, account for, and consolidate these materials.” It also says that they agree to encourage the conversion of reactors from HEU to low-enriched uranium, a stated priority of the U.S. in the run-up to the Summit.

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India wants ‘zero tolerance’ for nuclear traffickers

India and Pakistan take potshots at each other at the Nuclear Security Summit...

14 April 2010
The Hindu

India wants ‘zero tolerance’ for nuclear traffickers

Siddharth Varadarajan

Washington: With the spectre of A.Q. Khan and his clandestine smuggling ring still haunting India, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told world leaders that there should be “zero tolerance for individuals and groups which engage in illegal trafficking in nuclear items.”

He was speaking at the Nuclear Security Summit convened by the United States to address international concerns that lax national attitudes towards the physical protection of nuclear material could allow terrorists to acquire nuclear weapons or ‘dirty bombs.'

But if India could not resist the opportunity of reminding the world of the failings of its neighbour, Pakistan was also true to form, equating the problem of nuclear security to one of “strategic restraint” in the subcontinent.

Forty-seven countries attended the two-day meet. The next Nuclear Security Summit will be held in South Korea in 2012, they decided.

In a national statement delivered to the summit on Tuesday, Dr. Singh said India was deeply concerned about the danger of nuclear explosives or fissile material and technical know-how falling in to the hands of non-state actors.

The primary responsibility for ensuring nuclear security rested at the national level, he said “but national responsibility must be accompanied by responsible behaviour by States. If not, it remains an empty slogan.”

Dr. Singh's words were so sharply in contrast to what Pakistan's Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani told the summit working dinner on Monday night that they almost seemed to have been drafted in response. “Nuclear security within a state is a national responsibility,” Mr. Gilani had said.

In an implicit dig at Pakistan and those European states whose nationals were involved in the A.Q. Khan network, Prime Minister Singh said all countries should scrupulously abide by their international obligations. “It is a matter of deep regret that the global non-proliferation regime has failed to prevent nuclear proliferation. Clandestine proliferation networks have flourished and led to insecurity for all, including and especially for India. We must learn from past mistakes and institute effective measures to prevent their recurrence.”

In his remarks, Mr. Gilani said the “democratic government of Pakistan” was committed to ensuring nuclear security. Pakistan's objective is to “enhance nuclear security, in its holistic sense, and reduce nuclear risks,” said Mr. Gilani, adding that its proposals on “a strategic restraint regime in South Asia will go a long way in making our region secure and stable.” Pakistan had already worked with India on several nuclear confidence-building measures, he added. “This effort must continue. More than ever before, our two nations need to hold a sustained dialogue to address all issues.”

The Pakistani Prime Minister also made a renewed pitch for access to nuclear technology for peaceful uses “in a non-discriminatory manner.”

Though Dr. Singh dwelt at length on India's approach to nuclear security, the highlight of his remarks was the announcement of the Indian decision to set up a Global Centre for Nuclear Energy Partnership, “visualised to be a state-of-the-art facility based on international participation from the IAEA and other interested foreign partners.”

President Barack Obama responded to Dr. Singh's offer, saying “We welcome the announcement of the setting of the centre by India. This will be one more tool to establish best practices.”

Providing details of the new initiative, Dr. Singh said the centre would consist of four schools dealing with Advanced Nuclear Energy System Studies, Nuclear Security, Radiation Safety, and the application of Radioisotopes and Radiation Technology in the areas of healthcare, agriculture and food.

“The centre will conduct research and development of design systems that are intrinsically safe, secure, proliferation resistant and sustainable. We would welcome participation in this venture by your countries, the IAEA and the world to make this centre's work a success,” Dr. Singh said.

A four-page brochure prepared by the Department of Atomic Energy and distributed at the summit contained an outline of the programme modules to be offered at each of the four schools.

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Manmohan links nuclear security and disarmament

Best way to have nuclear security is to have no nukes...

14 April 2010
The Hindu

Manmohan links nuclear security and disarmament

Siddharth Varadarajan

Washington: India on Tuesday made a strong pitch for global disarmament with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh telling the Nuclear Security Summit that the abolition of nuclear weapons would be the “best guarantor of nuclear security.”

“The dangers of nuclear terrorism make the early elimination of nuclear weapons a matter of even greater urgency,” he said.

Recounting India's efforts in this regard from Jawaharlal Nehru to Rajiv Gandhi, the Prime Minister said non-proliferation efforts at the global level could only succeed if they were universal, comprehensive and non-discriminatory and linked to the goal of complete nuclear disarmament.

He welcomed the agreement between the United States and Russia to cut their nuclear arsenals as a step in the right direction and called upon all countries “with substantial nuclear arsenals” – the phrase is ambiguous but certainly excludes India – “to further accelerate this process by making deeper cuts that will lead to meaningful disarmament.”

The Prime Minister said India is “encouraged” by the Nuclear Posture Review announced by President Obama, though he did not identify any of its elements that he considered positive. India wants the negotiation of a Nuclear Weapons Convention and supports the universalisation of the policy of No First Use, he said. “The salience of nuclear weapons in national defence and security doctrines must be reduced as a matter of priority.”

Dr. Singh also drew attention to India's work on developing nuclear systems that were safe, secure and proliferation resistant.

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All eyes on Manmohan, Gilani handshake

A brief handshake and the exchange of pleasantries...







14 April 2010
The Hindu

All eyes were on Manmohan, Gilani handshake

Siddharth Varadarajan

Washington: Among all possible gestural permutations when 47 world leaders gather together in one room, the meeting of hands which everyone seemed to be waiting for was between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani.

The two Prime Ministers met at the Walter E. Washington convention centre in downtown Washington, venue of the Nuclear Security Summit which got under way on Monday evening with a reception hosted by President Barack Obama.

Prime Minister Gilani strode up to Dr. Singh and the two men greeted each other warmly.

According to Vishnu Prakash, spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs, Dr. Singh and Mr. Gilani “exchanged pleasantries.” As he was himself not present, he was unable to add any further details, despite being peppered with questions by enthusiastic reporters.

This was Dr. Singh and Mr. Gilani's first encounter since their July 2009 interaction on the sidelines of the Nonaligned Summit at Sharm-el-Sheikh in Egypt.

Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao ruled out the possibility of Prime Minister Singh meeting formally with Mr. Gilani in Washington. But Indian officials say the two leaders are likely to meet each other in Thimphu later this month during the SAARC summit and have a more substantive interaction than Monday's handshake, warm and effusive though it appears to have been.

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Nuclear Security Summit opens in Washington

47 nations gather to take stock of how to lock down all nuclear material ...

13 April 2010
The Hindu

Nuclear Security Summit opens in Washington

Siddharth Varadarajan

Washington: A major international summit convened here by Barack Obama to discuss ways of improving the security of nuclear materials got under way on Monday with the American President underlining the importance of preventing terrorists from getting hold of the ingredients for a nuclear bomb.

The two-day summit brings together 47 countries, including the U.S., 37 of whom are being represented by their heads of state or government. The event was kicked off on the evening of April 12 with a reception and ‘leaders working dinner' hosted by Mr. Obama. A final declaration, negotiated over the past few months by officials from participating countries, will be released on April 13.

While political differences with Iran and North Korea meant the U.S. never had any intention of inviting them for this summit, the guest list has some curious omissions.

Romania has nearly 1500 MWe of nuclear generating capacity and sources 20 per cent of its electricity from nuclear energy, Bulgaria's two reactors account for 35 per cent of its national power grid, and Hungary has four reactors generating one-third of its power. All three countries also figure in the list compiled by the International Panel on Fissile Material with stocks of Highly Enriched Uranium in the 10-100 kg. range. Yet, neither country will be at the Washington summit, even though Armenia, with just 370 MWe of nuclear power has been invited. Uzbekistan has also not been invited, despite holding HEU stocks in the 100-1000 kg range. But Georgia, with no nuclear programme to speak of, will be in Washington.

Two other countries whose presence ought to have been considered essential to such an endeavour are Niger and Namibia, who together account for nearly 18 per cent of the world's mined uranium. But the two African states, whose yellowcake drives much of the world's nuclear programme, were not considered important enough for the summit.

Asked about the criteria for invitations for the summit, Laura Holgate, Senior Director, WMD Terrorism & Threat Reduction at National Security Council, told reporters on Sunday that the idea was to get a representative set of countries. “We couldn't invite every single country that has any nuclear connectivity and so we were looking for countries that represented regional diversity where we had states that had weapons, states that don't have weapons, states with large nuclear programs, states with small nuclear programs.”

Both India and Pakistan are attending the summit at the prime ministerial level. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pulled out at the last minute, opting to send his Foreign Minister instead.

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In South Asia, Obama juggles tactical, strategic considerations

Tries to balance long-term Indian partnership with need for immediate gains from Pakistan ...






13 April 2010
The Hindu

In South Asia, Obama juggles tactical, strategic considerations
Tries to balance long-term Indian partnership with need for immediate gains from Pakistan

Siddharth Varadarajan

Washington: In holding virtually back-to-back meetings with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart, U.S. President Barack Obama symbolically underscored the delicate nature of the balancing act his administration is attempting to perform.

The exercise involves doing whatever it takes to keep the strategic partnership with India ticking along – a relationship that is of enormous long-term strategic value to the U.S. – while extracting maximum cooperation on the Afghanistan front from Pakistan and the Pakistani military establishment, a tactical, short-term necessity of the highest order for both the Pentagon and Mr. Obama's Democratic Party as they seek to draw down the Afghan war.

Briefing reporters about the Obama-Manmohan meeting on Sunday, Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao quoted the U.S. president as saying there was no country in the world where the opportunities for a strong, strategic partnership are greater and more important to him personally or to the United States, than that with India.

Taken at face value, these words are a throwback to the George W. Bush era, whose strategic embrace of India from 2004 onwards produced the Indo-U.S. nuclear agreement. Indian officials present in the meeting told The Hindu it was reassuring to hear the U.S. President speak directly and warmly about the importance of the bilateral relationship at a time when inter-agency differences on Pakistan and Afghanistan — particularly between the Defence and State departments — have created the impression in New Delhi that Washington no longer considers its partnership with India to be important.

Indian officials said Mr. Obama gave the impression of being aware that the Pakistani military – whose patronage in the past of extremist groups is widely recognised to lie at the root of the present problems of terrorism in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India – had yet to make a full course correction. A timely reminder of the double-game the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate in Pakistan is still playing was provided on Sunday by the Washington Post, which front-paged allegations sourced to American intelligence officials that the ISI had quietly released two Taliban commanders previously in their custody.

Though the Pentagon has consistently sought to push the argument that India needs to be more accommodating of Pakistani concerns across the Durand Line and the Line of Control in Kashmir, Mr. Obama made it a point to reassure Prime Minister Singh that he welcomed the continuing Indian development assistance to Afghanistan. True, the White House readout on this was brief and to the point, and omitted the reference Mr. Rao made in her briefing to the press about Indian “sacrifices.” But a more public expression of American support for India's interests in a country the Pakistani military considers its backyard would be unrealistic given the business Washington hopes to transact with GHQ in Rawalpindi.

Indian officials have taken heart from the fact that President Obama did not link his stated desire to see a reduction in tension between India and Pakistan with what is happening on the Afghan front. Even his reference to the need for tension to be reduced was understated. “If you weren't paying attention, you'd have missed it,” an Indian official who was in the room said, adding that the President made no reference to talks or dialogue, composite or otherwise.

But Mr. Obama brought up the subject of India-Pakistan relations again in his meeting with Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani later in the day. He told the Pakistani leader that Prime Minister Singh favoured greater engagement with Pakistan. Mr. Gilani responded by saying he agreed and that Islamabad had always believed that is the way things should be.

While it is too early to take full stock of the Obama-Manmohan meeting, it would seem as if India and the U.S. have come away with a slightly better understanding of each other's policies and constraints.

Even before the April 11 bilateral, senior Indian officials said it would be wrong to assume the U.S. does not know what it is doing with Pakistan or that it is blindly placating the military establishment in the hope that its war in Afghanistan could be outsourced. Indeed, the official conceded that the U.S. was acting rationally in trying to use parts of the Pakistani system to its advantage, while also developing other options. What India didn't want was for any act of appeasement to undermine its own legitimate interests in Afghanistan. In this context, the meeting between President Obama and his Kazakh counterpart, Nursultan Nazarbayev, is especially significant with Astana agreeing to participate in the ‘Northern Distribution Network' supplying U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

The fact that the U.S. did not press India to resume the composite dialogue with Pakistan despite the Pentagon's strong internal advocacy of such a line suggests the Obama administration is not buying the ‘threat from India' alibi the Pakistani military cites as the reason for holding back on the Afghan front.

The one area where major differences remain is over Iran. As anticipated, President Obama gave Prime Minister Singh a detailed account of meetings the U.S. is holding at the U.N. aimed at imposing a new round of sanctions on Iran. According to Ms. Rao and other Indian officials, Dr. Singh said India did not believe sanctions would be effective, especially since they end up hurting the common man. The Prime Minister also expressed concern over what the drive for sanctions would do to the prospect for dialogue with Iran. In the end, the two leaders agreed to disagree.

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Obama walks tightrope with Manmohan, Gilani

Appreciates India's interest in Afghanistan; tells Pakistan that extremists do not distinguish between victims ...

13 April 2010
The Hindu

Obama walks tightrope with Manmohan, Gilani

Siddharth Varadarajan and Narayan Lakshman

Washington: India and the United States made a fresh push on Sunday to dispel the clouds of uncertainty hovering over their relationship in the wake of America's increasing dependence on Pakistan as a partner in its war against extremism in Afghanistan.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Barack Obama, accompanied by their top advisers, met here for 50 minutes on the eve of the Nuclear Security Summit. A few hours later, the U.S. President sat down with Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani of Pakistan.

The U.S. President reassured Dr. Singh that he “welcomed the humanitarian and development assistance that India continues to provide to Afghanistan,” the White House said in a statement. Providing an Indian account of the discussions, Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao said President Obama told the Prime Minister the U.S. “fully appreciated India's interest in Afghanistan and recognised the enormous sacrifices that India has made in helping to stabilise that country.”

Mr. Obama also sought to put to rest speculation on America's reluctance to allow Indian investigators access to David Coleman Headley, the Lashkar-e-Taiba operative arraigned in Chicago for his role in the November 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks. Ms. Rao described the U.S. President as being “fully supportive of our request for provision of such access.”

In his meeting with Prime Minister Gilani, Mr. Obama said that “extremists do not distinguish between us and we are truly facing a common enemy,” a White House readout of the exchange said. Mr. Obama also sought to dispel Islamabad's fears that the U.S. had sinister designs towards the country's nuclear programme, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi told reporters later.

Playing his role as an economist to the hilt, Prime Minister Singh told Mr. Obama about the role the U.S. and G-20 could play in speeding up the recovery of the global economy. India was also playing a role in the “architecture of high economic growth,” he said, but warned that the terrorist onslaught in the region “could affect our growth prospects.” This terrorist menace should be tackled and this was an issue on which India and the U.S. stood on the same side, Ms. Rao quoted the Prime Minister as saying. “He said this with specific reference to what is happening in Pakistan and Afghanistan. How this menace was tackled would determine the future of the South Asian region, the Prime Minister said. He mentioned in this context the issue of David Coleman Headley and also the tremendous rise in infiltration across the Line of Control.” Dr. Singh also brought up the activities of the Lashkar-e-Taiba and terrorists like Hafiz Saeed and Ilyas Kashmiri, “as also the fact that unfortunately there was no will on the part of the government of Pakistan to punish those responsible for the terrorist crimes in Mumbai of November 2008,” Ms. Rao said.

Directly spelling out New Delhi's expectations, the Prime Minister said that this was an area “where the partnership of India and the United States could make the difference.”

According to Ms. Rao, President Obama said he shared Dr. Singh's vision of South Asia and that he favoured the reduction of tensions between the two countries. At this point, the Prime Minister stressed the need for Pakistan to take convincing action against those accused of involvement in the Mumbai attacks, the Foreign Secretary said. She added that Mr. Obama fully understood Indian concerns about the LeT and other terrorist groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The U.S. was engaging Islamabad on these issues and would be sensitive to the concerns India has expressed in the context of American security assistance to Pakistan. Asked to elaborate what that meant, Mr. Rao said the issue would be monitored “keeping India's concerns in mind.”

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Nations mull plan to tighten security of nuclear materials

But misunderstandings abound over the summit agenda... It is about nuclear weapons? Or proliferation? or nuclear energy?... The truth is the NSS is really about the physical protection of nuclear materials...

12 April 2010
The Hindu

Nations mull plan to tighten security of nuclear materials

Siddharth Varadarajan

Washington: Conceived with theatrical flourish by President Barack Obama last April, the Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) which gets under way here on Monday combines the pursuit of a serious agenda — how to physically secure sensitive nuclear materials around the world so that terrorists don't get hold of them —with an element of smoke and mirrors.

After all, many countries whose nuclear programmes, resources or ambitions should have led to an invite are not here, including Iran and North Korea. And many of those who say the world should do more for the physical protection of nuclear and radiological material – including the U.S. – have themselves not acceded to basic international agreements dealing with these issues such as the 2005 Amendment to the International Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material or the International Convention on the Suppression of Nuclear Terrorism.

Welcome though the heightened international focus on nuclear terrorism is, the high-profile nature of the summit — 37 of the participating 47 countries are represented at the level of President or Prime Minister — also helps draw the spotlight away from the threat posed to the world by the arsenals and doctrines of nuclear weapon states such as the U.S.

One year after publicly declaring himself in favour of a nuclear weapon-free world, for example, Mr. Obama unveiled a Nuclear Posture Review which continues to advocate their pre-emptive use.

Against this contradictory backdrop, it is hardly surprising that misunderstandings abound over what the summit is actually about. A leading British newspaper is calling it a summit on nuclear weapons and an Indian official suggested the summit might be a good occasion for India to roll out an updated version of the Rajiv Gandhi plan for global disarmament.

A summit-eve statement prepared for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who arrived here on Saturday night, initially had him saying the NSS would focus on nuclear terrorism and the “proliferation of sensitive nuclear materials and technologies.”

The P word was later replaced with ‘security,' but its initial use betrayed a certain unfamiliarity within the government of what the Washington meeting is supposed to be about.

The truth is the NSS is not about high-octane subjects like nuclear weapons, non-proliferation, arms control or disarmament. Instead, it concerns something much more prosaic: the physical security of nuclear and radiological materials around the world. Materials which, if they fall into the hands of terrorists or criminals, could allow them to make or acquire a nuclear weapon or a dirty bomb.

Attempts resisted

Ironically, Indian officials who had taken part in the preparatory work for the summit had successfully warded off suggestions early on in the process that it deal not just with physical protection of nuclear material but also proliferation and interdiction-related issues.

Early attempts to bring in links to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, to which India is not a signatory, were resisted.

At other times, India joined together with the other nuclear weapon states to keep nuclear weapons out of the purview of the summit declaration. The consensus document – which will be released on Tuesday — speaks instead of keeping all nuclear material physically secure, regardless of how the state which owns it intends to use it.

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Nuclear Summit agenda is to ensure terrorists don't get the bomb

Non-proliferation targets states; nuclear security targets non-state actors...







12 April 2010
The Hindu

Nuclear Summit agenda is to ensure terrorists don't get the bomb
Non-proliferation targets states; nuclear security targets non-state actors

Siddharth Varadarajan

Washington: There is a simple way to decode the sacred words of nuclear theology. If the atomic world is divided into the ‘haves,' ‘have nots' and the ‘must not haves,' then arms control and disarmament is aimed at the first tier: those that actually possess nuclear weapons. Non-proliferation focuses on the states which do not have them and the emerging architecture of ‘nuclear security' targets those who must never have them — non-state actors and terrorists.

Limiting, reducing and eliminating the arsenals of nuclear weapon states is what the game of arms control and disarmament is all about, which is why, perhaps, there has been so little progress. Even U.S. President Barack Obama, who spoke of a nuclear weapons-free world in his Prague speech last April, added the caveat that this was unlikely to happen in his lifetime.

The have nots of the nuclear world are those who have voluntarily agreed not to acquire nuclear weapons by acceding to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty as non-nuclear weapon states. The entire system of non-proliferation is aimed at ensuring that this second tier of players in the global system remains true to its commitment. Since the NPT allows these countries to acquire and develop sensitive nuclear technologies like enrichment and reprocessing for peaceful purposes, the U.S. is trying to tighten the non-proliferation screws, but there is, as yet, no international consensus.

The Obama administration hopes to use the recent arms reduction treaty between the U.S. and Russia to make another push at the NPT review conference this summer. As non-members of the NPT, India, Pakistan and Israel used to be treated as undifferentiated members of this tier. The Indo-U.S. nuclear deal saw India being cut a lot more slack, but it still finds itself on non-proliferation target lists of one kind or another. A recent example was the 2009 G-8 ban on enrichment and reprocessing technology sales to India and other non-NPT states.

The third tier in the matrix of nuclear concerns consists of terrorists and non-state actors, who must not be allowed to have nuclear weapons under any circumstances. If non-proliferation measures are aimed at states, physical security of the kind that the April 12-13 Nuclear Security Summit is promoting is aimed directly at terrorists. The goal is to ensure they are never able to acquire, purchase or steal nuclear or radiological material from states which own or monitor stocks of such material on their territory.

There is, of course, a thin line dividing the narrow subject of physical security from the wider set of nuclear issues. If there is a danger of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists, those countries which have such weapons need to discuss how to keep their arsenals secure. Sources familiar with the summit document said measures to keep assembled nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists did not form part of the agenda in the preparatory phase.

According to nuclear theology, de-alerting and de-mating weapons and warheads has to be part of a separate discussion on disarmament, which has yet to start in earnest. Thus, concerns such as Pakistan's nuclear arsenal falling into the hands of terrorists will be addressed only indirectly at the Washington summit, with the question rephrased to focus on the physical protection of nuclear material.

If states deliberately allow sensitive nuclear material within their jurisdiction to go to places it should not, that's proliferation and not theft. Though there is always the danger of states proliferating to non-state actors directly or via middlemen of the kind who made up the wider A.Q. Khan network, the Washington summit is unlikely directly to address state behaviour of this kind because the U.S. has already developed ad hoc arrangements like the Proliferation Security Initiative to interdict such proliferation.

What is lacking so far is a strong international focus on the physical protection of radioactive and radiological material without prejudice to the nuclear or non-nuclear weapon status of countries. In other words, even if the Pakistani government's claim about A.Q. Khan operating on his own is true, the fact that he could load sensitive nuclear material and technology on to a plane and fly out of the country undetected suggests serious shortcomings in Pakistan's system of physical security.

International rules

The 1979 International Convention on Physical Protection of Nuclear Material (ICPPNM) was the first instrument to deal with physical protection of uranium and plutonium, but only when they were in transit. In 2005, the Convention was amended to include the protection of physical facilities where such material is kept. But with only 32 countries, including India, having acceded, the Amendment has yet to enter into force.

Pakistan has not acceded, nor has the U.S. Finally, UN Security Council Resolution 1540 of 2004 obliges countries, inter alia, to develop and maintain physical protection measures for WMD items, refrain from helping non-state actors acquire or develop WMDs and to pass laws prohibiting non-state actors from doing so.

The Russian-sponsored International Convention on the Suppression of Nuclear Terrorism of 2005 has entered into force, but key states like the U.S. and Pakistan have not yet ratified it. This convention obliges state parties to make the unlawful possession of radioactive material with intent to kill, cause injury or damage a criminal offence. States are obliged to prosecute or extradite suspects and the convention rules out the “political offences exception” as a ground for refusing extradition.

The Washington summit is likely to see a call being made for wider adherence to these international instruments and guidelines. The U.S. would also like to use the summit to wean countries off Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) altogether. HEU is used across the world in research reactors as well as for the production of medical isotopes.

But the farthest the declaration is likely to go is to endorse national initiatives in this regard. The Obama administration’s inability to forge a consensus on HEU will come as a setback to its policy on Iran, given Tehran’s announcement that it is going to enrich uranium to 19.5 per cent for medical purposes.

Some analysts are uncomfortable with the summit’s compartmentalised approach to nuclear security, non-proliferation and disarmament. “One scenario that needs to be managed in particular, is that in which states might use terrorist groups to attack adversaries by proxy, ‘engineering’ nuclear security breakdowns on their own soil to facilitate terrorist access to weapons or materials,” says Ian Kearns of the British American Security Information Council.

‘Misguided attempt’

Given the linkages between nuclear security, disarmament and non-proliferation, U.S. attempts to separate the nuclear security summit from the rest of the non-proliferation and disarmament agenda are misguided, he argues in a new monograph released on the eve of the Washington meeting. But Indian officials familiar with the negotiations on the summit draft say that had these issues not been separated out, meaningful consensus would have been hard to achieve.

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Iran sanctions push casts shadow on Manmohan-Obama meet

Washington has been trying to garner international support for tightening screws on Tehran...

11 April 2010
The Hindu

Iran sanctions push casts shadow on Manmohan-Obama meet

Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi: Apart from lingering concerns over aspects of the U.S. administration's AfPak policy, it is the latest American sanctions drive against Iran that most immediately concerns Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's advisers as he goes into a bilateral meeting with President Barack Obama here on Monday afternoon.

Asked about the agenda of the meeting — which is being held on the eve of the Nuclear Security Summit — a senior Indian official said the two leaders would cover the full range of bilateral, regional and international issues.

Apart from discussions on how to move the bilateral relationship forward in the run-up to the Foreign Minister-level strategic dialogue set for June, Afghanistan and Iran are the issues expected to dominate. “It is obvious the U.S. will raise what bothers them most, which is Iran,” said the official. For the past few weeks, Washington has been trying to garner international support for tightening economic sanctions on Tehran over the nuclear issue, a move that key countries like China and Brazil are resisting.

Though India is not a member of the United Nations Security Council, the U.S. is keen to enlist its support. But New Delhi is not convinced. “We don't think sanctions are needed or that they will solve the problem,” said the official, speaking on background. “We have complied with whatever sanctions the UN imposed but only as part of a broader process of engagement with Iran.” The Iranians, he said, had repeatedly told India that they do not want nuclear weapons.

“Unfortunately others don't believe that. So the only way to resolve this is through the [work of the] International Atomic Energy Agency” rather than through coercive means.

Red rag to Washington

The official also confirmed that India, like China, had accepted Iran's invitation to participate in an international conference in Tehran on April 17-18 on the theme of ‘Nuclear Energy for All, Nuclear Weapons for None.' That conference, scheduled right after the Nuclear Security Summit to which the Islamic Republic has not been invited, is another red rag to Washington, which has quietly been discouraging other countries from attending.

The senior official said the Prime Minister would also discuss the AfPak issue with Mr. Obama. Asked about recent reports suggesting the Pentagon favoured a smaller Indian footprint in Afghanistan, the official said “our role [there] is not a function of India-U.S. relations. We just happen to have the same goals. But we will play our role with or without the U.S. because we have core interests in our periphery which we will protect. The issue really is about coordination.”

No change in role

Since the Manmohan-Obama meeting of November 2009, the situation in the region had evolved. “There are two things here – first, the increasing predominance of the Army and second, legal statutes are being modified to transfer power back to the prime minister.” The official said the U.S. couldn't be blamed for trying to use the Pakistani military as part of its strategy of pacifying Afghanistan.

But in India's assessment, Pakistan's role in Afghanistan had not really changed and was unlikely to in the future.

India shared the same goal as the U.S., the official said – the establishment of a peaceful, neutral Afghanistan free from foreign interference. “Last year, there was talk of giving regional powers a greater role. But not much has happened, perhaps because of the Iran-U.S. tension, and now the situation in Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia. There are so many moving parts in this equation it needs reviewing constantly.”

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More than a few glimmers of hope

By granting broad rights to the provinces and parliament, the 18th amendment to the constitution has opened a door for the long-term reconfiguration of politics and state power in Pakistan. And that's good news for India...



10 April 2010
The Hindu

More than a few glimmers of hope

Siddharth Varadarajan

Working quietly and even stealthily, Pakistani politicians have pulled a rabbit of hope out of their hat in the shape of the 18th amendment to the constitution. Remember hope? Hare today, gone tomorrow, he was last spotted scurrying down a deep hole, even as men in khaki strutted around in Islamabad and Washington holding strategic dialogues, and terrorists with suicide vests and ridiculous edicts prowled the streets asserting their sole right to determine the future of Pakistan.

The men in khaki are still there, as are the terrorists, and they will probably be around for a while still. But the latest constitutional amendment, coupled with the first proper award of the National Finance Commission (NFC) in 13 years, has opened a door to the long-term reconfiguration of state power, primarily by increasing the economic and, eventually, political weight of Balochistan, Sindh and Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa (the new name for the North West Frontier Province) vis-à-vis the federal government. The NFC has given them a greater share of tax revenues by moving away from population being the sole criterion for allocation. And the 18th amendment, which also makes the provinces co-owners of the oil and gas reserves under their soil, says the provincial share in the NFC cannot be reduced. This means the share can either stay the same or go up, affecting direct claimants to the federal purse such as the military establishment. By itself, this may seem like a small step. But it is bound to become an important factor in the slow transformation of Pakistan into a “normal” democracy – a democracy where the military's guidance is neither expected nor imposed. Earlier, the provincial masses were the mainstay of opposition to military rule; the new arrangements give provincial elites a stake in genuine federalism and democracy.

As an all-party committee of Pakistani legislators worked under the radar on these reforms for eight months, India, like the rest of the world, allowed itself to become convinced its neighbour was going down the tubes. The last 12 months has seen the power and influence of the military establishment grow enormously. That's bad news, given that most of the problems Pakistan is dealing with today – terrorism, extremism, regional unrest, economic mismanagement, the shortage of electricity and water — are a legacy of decades upon decades of military rule.

The blame for this reassertion of military power and prestige lies, firstly, with the United States, which continues to treat GHQ as its most valuable strategic asset within Pakistan. But the country's major political players – primarily the Pakistan People's Party of President Asif Ali Zardari and the Pakistan Muslim League of Mian Nawaz Sharif — must also share a part of the blame. Their jousting and squabbling has only made it easier for the generals to present themselves as anchors of stability. The celebrated ‘independent judiciary' of Pakistan has also queered the pitch. Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhary is fighting legal battles that belong to an earlier era, battles whose resolution today can only weaken the power of political parties at a time when the country needs mass politics more than ever before.

There is, no doubt, enormous merit in exposing the fraudulent manner in which earlier governments used their authority to drop high-profile cases of corruption against Mr. Zardari and his late wife, Benazir Bhutto. But can the polity of Pakistan afford to be selective about its past sins? If there is to be legal accounting for the Swiss cases and others against the Bhuttos, what about an honest and wholesale judicial repudiation of the “doctrine of necessity”, first introduced in Pakistan by Chief Justice Muhammad Munir in 1954 and used by the Supreme Court meekly to rubber-stamp one coup after the next? Some may argue that Justice Chaudhary's final stand against Pervez Musharraf symbolically cleansed the Pakistani judiciary of the stain of complicity. By the same token, the fact that Mr. Zardari has become the first President in a land of usurpers to return powers and prerogatives to the Prime Minister and Parliament must surely count for something.

The 18th amendment, passed by a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly on Thursday, will go some way towards exorcising the ghosts of the past by calling the suspension of the Constitution an act of high treason. But whether textual provisions serve as a deterrent to the military and its apologists amongst the Pakistani elite would depend, in the first instance, on the willingness of political leaders and parties to stand up for what they have now inscribed.

From India's perspective, the new changes are good news. They provide strong confirmation of a key assumption Indian policymakers made when assessing how to react to the terrorist attacks on Mumbai in November 2008. Resisting the temptation to go hawkish, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh understood at the time that political power in Pakistan was fragmented and in a state of flux. And that India should seek to strengthen the hands of those who are opposed to terrorism and who favour better bilateral relations. Even if the 18th amendment by itself does not immediately strengthen the hands of liberal, rational elements in Pakistan, it certainly creates the conditions for that to happen. On its part, India needs to do all it can to encourage the process.

Unfortunately, Indian policy towards Pakistan over the past few months has been slightly schizophrenic. Within the overall policy of remaining engaged with, and encouraging, democratic forces, there have been significant deviations. Dr. Singh may have been factually accurate when he told an interviewer last November that he didn't know who to deal with in Pakistan now that General Musharraf was no longer in power. But his frank expression of uncertainty in the Zardari-Gilani administration only ended up further undermining the credibility of the elected government.

A much worse kind of insensitivity was on display last month when ill-informed speculation that the United States was on the verge of entering into a civil nuclear agreement with Pakistan sent the Indian media into a tizzy. This prompted the Ministry of External Affairs to come out against the possibility of such a deal. In 2008, Pranab Mukherjee, who was external affairs minister at the time, had said, quite correctly, that India was in favour of Pakistan being able to access all forms of energy for its development. “In respect of civil nuclear cooperation between Pakistan and the U.S., we would like to encourage civil nuclear cooperation — its full use of nuclear energy — as we believe every country has its right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes,” he answered when a direct question was put to him by reporters in Washington. As a politician, Mr. Mukherjee knew that the prospect for such an agreement was very remote and that there was no harm in India being on the side of the angels. This time too, South Block ought to have known there was no nuclear deal in the works for Islamabad. Under the circumstances, publicly opposing such a hypothetical deal was not only unnecessary but unhelpful too. It needlessly gave extremists a stick to use in their propaganda that India was opposed to Pakistan's progress. It also helped to alienate the politicians who form part of the elected government in Islamabad, since Prime Minister Gilani had publicly announced his desire to pursue nuclear cooperation with the U.S.

As India formulates its next moves with Pakistan, it needs to focus on what is important and vital and ignore the sideshows and booby-traps. Above all, it needs to factor in the new arrangements that are taking shape across the border. Pakistan is not a failed state and will not easily become one because there are enough Pakistanis who are determined to fight for the right to live in a democracy, a democracy that is genuinely federal, prosperous and free from the curse of religious extremism and terror. The 18th amendment is a reflection of that determination, even if many more battles remain to be fought and won.

The last meeting between the two foreign secretaries produced no substantial move forward because both sides are reluctant to deviate from their current positions. India says there can be no substantial dialogue until the infrastructure of terrorism which still exists in Pakistan is destroyed. Pakistan says no to any form of talks short of the resumption of the composite dialogue. It is possible that after a few weeks of churning in Islamabad — a major clash between the judiciary and the government over Mr. Zardari's cases is looming — the Pakistani side may agree to another round of talks about talks. India must respond positively, even as it takes proactive steps on trade and other fronts to build constituencies for peace with its western neighbour.

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