ISLAMABAD, 11 December 2002 — In postponing a seven-nation South Asian summit, Pakistan is trying to reframe its dispute with India as an issue of Indian intransigence and not, as New Delhi would like, of Islamabad’s position on divided Kashmir. After weeks of Indian equivocation on whether it would attend, Pakistan on Monday delayed the summit it was due to host next month of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and set no new dates, in another blow to what may be the world’s most ineffectual regional forum.
Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had said on Dec. 1 he would attend the summit — in what would be his first trip to Pakistan in nearly four years — only if Islamabad put an end to the "cross-border terrorism" he said it sponsored in the insurgency-torn Indian zone of Kashmir. Rather than either appear to bow before its archenemy’s demands or suffer the humiliation of an Indian boycott, Pakistan took the initiative, delaying the summit and blaming it on India, which it said "has been acting deviously all along" in preparations for the meeting. India tried to turn Pakistan’s position back against it, responding that it was Islamabad that had "systematically sabotaged ... every meaningful proposal" of SAARC and insisting that the forum of one of the world’s poorest regions concentrate on economic cooperation.
Pakistan and India came close to war after an attack a year ago on the Indian Parliament by gunmen New Delhi linked to Pakistan. After aggressive diplomacy led by the United States and Britain, India announced in October a pullback of some of troops deployed to its shared borders with Pakistan, a move reciprocated by Pakistan. India also said Pakistan had promised a US envoy that it would halt the flow of Islamic guerrillas into its zone of Kashmir.
Former Pakistani diplomat Khalid Mahmood said the international powers that had so pushed for de-escalation in South Asia would see India as the reason for the summit’s delay. "Part of the normalization drive was the holding of the SAARC summit. The Indians have only taken the first step in this process by announcing the withdrawal," said Mahmood, an analyst at the state-funded Institute of Regional Studies.
Some observers, however, believe Pakistan should have waited for an Indian response until after Thursday’s election in the Indian state of Gujarat. The election is considered critical for Vajpayee’s Hindu nationalist BJP party, which in campaigning has been taking a militant anti-Pakistan stance that would lose credibility by an Indian RSVP for the Islamabad summit. Pakistan "perhaps has reacted prematurely," said Imtiaz Alam, an editor and columnist for The News daily.
It is only the latest setback for SAARC, which was founded in 1985 and has barely any achievements to show due to the bickering between its two largest members. SAARC represents one-third of the world’s population and also includes Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Some of the countries would have likely cancelled attendance at the summit had Vajpayee boycotted it, fearing peeving their giant neighbor.
"Why should India and Pakistan be playing like little kids?" asked Alam. "There are a lot of issues to discuss at the regional level," he said. "This is not a sensible approach to the regional situation."
Tension between India and Pakistan overshadowed the last SAARC summit held in January 2002 in Katmandu, at which Vajpayee refused to meet Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who, undeterred, marched up to the Indian leader from the podium and shook his hand. That summit had been delayed by more than two years as India declined to sit next to Pakistan following the bloody incursion of Islamabad-backed Muslim fighters in the Kargil region of Indian Kashmir in 1999. (AFP)
