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Commentary/Mani Shankar Aiyar

Gujral must shift the paradigm of India-Pakistan relations from the 20th to the 21st century

Since Gujral is not minister for South Asian affairs but for the whole gamut of our foreign policy, he deserves applause for having persisted with our stand on CTBT, although my plaudits would have been more sustained if he had anticipated and prepared the country for the drubbing we got in our bid to wrest a non-permanent seat on the Security Council.

Gujral's first six months have, however, been stretching exercises for the real task that is to come. By about the time this column appears in print, the elections in Pakistan would be over and our most refractory neighbour ready for the Gujral touch. Narasimha Rao offered a dialogue on all issues including those related to Kashmir. But the dialogue failed to take off, largely because our offer matched Pakistan's acceptance of it in insincerity.

Gujral will, I hope, I pray, prove to be a sincere interlocutor. He also needs to be both patient and persistent with Pakistan. He has shown he is capable of all this and more by his refusal to be provoked by Pakistani posturing at the UN or elsewhere. But Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are child's play compared to Pakistan. Going through the other neighbours before getting to Pakistan is like Vishwanathan Anand readying for the big one against Kasparov.

I am going to Pakistan to see whether the unsolicited advice I have served up in the past to Gujral's predecessors is in need of revalidation or modification. And whether he needs it or not, I have every intention of button-holing Gujral when I come back. But unless Gujral sees that the need of the hour is to shift the paradigm of India-Pakistan relations from the 20th to the 21st century, we are not going to be able to make the imaginative leap required to take us from confrontation to co-operation.

For if the 20th century has been about the re-ordering of political relations on the subcontinent, the 21st century is going to be about the re-ordering of economic relations. And in that endeavour, it is energy co-operation that is going to take pride of place. If Gujral bears in mind Petroleum Secretary Vijay Kelkar's apt aphorism about the 20th century having been the century of oil, while the 21st century will be of natural gas, then he will see that the two most important countries for the conjoint flourishing of India and Pakistan (and Afghanistan) are Iran and Turkmenistan. Whom Kashmir goes to or remains with us is nothing compared to the natural gas we both need to, and can, secure from the countries to the immediate north and west of our sub-region.

Second, I had warned Gujral last September that if we did not seize the initiative to push for the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament to put the elimination of weapons of mass destruction on its agenda, the euphoria over India's stand on CTBT would soon evaporate (or, worse, give the Bomb lobby in India an opening to take us down the path of doom). That, I am afraid, is happening because Gujral chickened out of taking such an initiative at the last UN General Assembly session.

The Congress having, apparently, lost the nerve to sack his government, Gujral will, perhaps, be given one last chance to show his mettle at one more UN General Assembly session this autumn. He needs to begin preparing for that now.

Gujral can do so, for he alone shines among the dross on the Treasury Benches. Why the Treasury Benches are so called, however, I am unable to tell; for with Chidambaram also adorning them, surely it would be more appropriate to call them the Treachery Benches!

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Mani Shankar Aiyar
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