EuropaWorld 20/7/2001 The Agra Summit: A Great Opportunity Discarded For Want of Preparation

The failure of the Agra Summit is both sad and bad. It is sad because a great opportunity has been thrown away, when the chance of achieving a series of positive outcomes was there for the taking. And it was bad because the cause of peace and prosperity in South Asia has been damaged, and with it the reputations of both President Musharraf and Prime Minister Vajpayee. Only the hardliners, the extremists on both sides have gained. There will now be no shortage of those who claimed to have said 'I told you so;' indeed the chorus has already begun.

What has also begun is the analysis. Which side was responsible for the breakdown of talks - or rather, why in the curious language of the Indian Foreign Affairs spokesperson - the destination of a joint agreement could not be reached. You pays your money and you takes your choice. But as a former British civil servant I am left wondering why the whole summit enterprise was handled so maladroitly.

Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the Agra Summit was to a greater extent a failure by officials than a failure by the politicians. It certainly looks that way. Indian officials had wanted prepared a proper summit agenda after discussions at official level, so that papers could be written. Pakistan did not agree, perhaps fearing that any such discussions at official level would have rapidly become deadlocked. If so, it was an omen.

Instead Pakistan, in the shape of President and former General Musharraf wanted to sweep bureaucracy aside and grab the bull of the Kashmir issue by the horns. What was the purpose, he implied, in talking about issues such as trade when people continued to die in Kashmir? He wanted a soldier's direct approach - open, flexible, man to man.

Well, he had seven hours of man to man discussions, returning endlessly to his theme of trying to make progress on Kashmir - 'a phenomenal interaction' as the Pakistan daily 'The Nation' called it. And he got nowhere - as his officials might have told him if they had been allowed to explore fully the feelings of the Indian side beforehand.

'Politics is the art of the possible' said a former famous British Conservative, Rab Butler. Politicians, however powerful, simply can't do whatever they want. They can only do what circumstances will let them do. All are prisoners of their own circumstances. Musharraf may have wanted to grab the bull by the horns but unless you are Hercules, grabbing a bull by the horns is a singularly ineffective way of taming it; most likely you end up tossed in the air, more likely gored as well. There is no point, either, in blaming the bull.

India, too, is a prisoner of circumstance and Prime Minister Vajpayee is a prisoner of India. His room for manoeuvre is limited and he prefers to avoid the bull.

So it was surely unrealistic to believe that two heads of State meeting for seven hours - without the serious preparation of key proposals and defining of common ground - could ever arrive at a body of ideas that would, not only settle an endemic conflict of fifty years standing, but also be widely acceptable to the majority of citizens in India, Pakistan and Kashmir. Both sides were, in effect, asking the other for concessions while not giving any ground themselves.

So officials must have known that the chance of failure was very high and yet if they had one shared desire it must have been to present the Summit in as positive a way as possible. Both sides have reason to court world opinion - not least to unlock further funds for development. Why did officials on both sides allow their leaders to enter a cul-de-sac without an exit?

To be fair to them the Indian side did try to develop other issues including trade and security but these were put aside by Pakistan which wanted to focus exclusively on Kashmir. They are issues that can be used to make progress. They should have been used this time.

Perhaps the only constructive development to have come out of this sorry affair is that this is not the end of the road. There will be another meeting between the two heads at which the damage can be repaired and with luck some forward movement achieved. Anything that contributes towards positive dialogue must be welcome and therefore while Kashmir is bound to remain the central issue, progress can also be made in parallel on important peripheral issues such as trade.

Secondly, it must be hoped that the two governments set up a semi-permanent conference between their officials to define common ground and to explore the dimensions of all areas in dispute. Here lessons could be learned from the peace process in Northern Ireland and the Anglo-Irish agreement which has largely brought to an end a conflict that has simmered since the country was partitioned in 1922. Failure is not an option in the second round.