[1] Background on India

Microsoft Encarta 98 Encyclopedia

India, officially Republic of India (Hindi Bharat), country in southern Asia and member of the Commonwealth of Nations, situated in the subcontinent of India and comprising, with Pakistan and Bangladesh, the 17 territories formerly included in British India and the native states of India.  India consists geographically of the entire Indian Peninsula and portions of the Asian mainland. It is bounded on the north by Afghanistan, China, Nepal, and Bhutan; on the east by Bangladesh, Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), and the Bay of Bengal; on the south by Palk Strait and the Gulf of Mannar (which separate it from Sri Lanka) and the Indian Ocean; and on the west by the Arabian Sea and Pakistan. Including the portion of Jammu and Kashmìr administered by India but disputed by Pakistan, India has an area of 1,222,243 square miles. The capital of India is New Delhi, and the country’s largest city is Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay).

The major religious groups (followed by their approximate portion of the total population) are Hindus (83%), Muslims (11%), Christians (2%), Sikhs (2%), Buddhists (0.7%), and Jains (0.5%).

The number of languages or dialects spoken in India is more than 1,600, comprising 16 major language groups. The constitution provides that the official language of the country is Hindi. However, it also accepts English as an associate language and approves its use for official purposes. The constitution allows state legislatures to adopt any of 17 other regional languages for official purposes.

India ranks second only to China among the world’s most populous countries, with a population of about 1 billion.  The overall population density is about 779 per square miles.  About 73% of India’s population lives in rural areas.

The Republic of India is governed according to the provisions of a constitution adopted in 1949, which incorporates various features of the constitutional systems of Great Britain, the United States, and other Western democracies.

India is a union of 25 states and seven centrally administered territories.  By the terms of the Indian organic law, which proclaims the state a sovereign democratic republic, the government is federal in its structure and republican in character. Like the United States, India is a union of states, but its government is more highly centralized than the U.S. government, and the rights of the states and territories are rigidly limited.

The Indian government supports a mixed economy, most of which is in the control of private enterprise. Under a policy announced in 1956, the government undertook a plan to nationalize entire segments of the economy, while leaving other sectors subject to varying degrees of government planning and control. Nearly 250 corporations were owned by the state in the early 1990s. Financial strains created in part by the Persian Gulf War, which raised oil prices and sharply reduced remittances by Indians working in Gulf states, were the impetus to economic reforms initiated in 1991. The reforms extended earlier economic liberalizations, reducing government controls on production, trade, and investment. Results by the mid-1990s included a reduction in the inflation rate and growth in export earnings.

Successive five-year plans, in force since 1951, have achieved a steady rate of economic growth, except for periods of severe drought, such as in 1979 and 1987. In 1994 India’s annual gross domestic product (GDP) was $291.1 billion. The economy grew in real terms at an annual average of 4.9 percent during the period from 1965 to 1980 and 7.1 percent during the period from 1980 to 1992. The estimated annual budget in 1993 included revenues of about $30.9 billion and expenditures of $48.5 billion.

 

[2] Background on Pakistan

Microsoft Encarta 98 Encyclopedia

Pakistan, officially Islamic Republic of Pakistan, republic in southern Asia, bounded on the north and northwest by Afghanistan, on the northeast by Jammu and Kashmìr, on the east and southeast by India, on the south by the Arabian Sea, and on the west by Iran. The status of Jammu and Kashmìr is a matter of dispute between India and Pakistan. Until December 1971 Pakistan included the province of East Pakistan; at that time, however, East Pakistan seceded from Pakistan and assumed the name Bangladesh. The area of Pakistan is 307,374 square miles, not including the section of Jammu and Kashmìr under its control. The capital of Pakistan is Islamabad; the largest city in the country is Karachi.

The leading religion of Pakistan is Islam, which is the faith of about 97 percent of the people. About four-fifths of the Muslims are Sunni, and about one-fifth are Shiite. Hinduism and Christianity form the leading minority religions; other religious groups include the Sikhs, the Parsees, and a small number of Buddhists. The constitution defines Pakistan as an Islamic nation, but guarantees freedom of religion.  The ethnological background of the population of Pakistan is extremely varied, largely because the country lies in an area that was invaded repeatedly during its long history. The people come from such ethnic stocks as the Dravidian, Indo-Aryan, Greek, Scythian, Hun, Arab, Mongol, Persian, and Afghan. 

The population of Pakistan is about 130 million, yielding an average population density of about 421 per square miles.  Only about 35 percent of the people live in urban areas.

Pakistan adopted a constitution in 1973, which was subsequently amended. Following a military coup d’état in 1977, however, a system of martial law was put into effect, and most aspects of the 1973 constitution were suspended. In 1985 parliamentary government was reestablished, the constitution restored, and martial law ended. Legislation enacted in 1991 made Sharia, or Islamic law, the supreme law of the land. In October 1999, a bloodless military coup led by Gen. Pervez Musharraf ousted Sharif, suspended the constitution, and declared martial law. Sharif was charged with treason, and in April 2000, he was convicted of hijacking an airliner (as a result of issuing orders to deny permission to land to the plane that Musharraf had been on prior to the 1999 coup) and was sentenced to life in prison. Sharif subsequently was also convicted on corruption charges, and later exiled (December 2000) to Saudi Arabia.

For administrative purposes, Pakistan is divided into four provinces (Baluchistan, North-West Frontier Province, Punjab, and Sind); the Federal Capital Territory, which consists of the capital city of Islamabad; and six federally administered tribal areas.

The economy of Pakistan grew by 5.1 percent annually during the period from 1965 to 1980 and by about 6 percent during the 1980s and early 1990s. Nevertheless, in the early 1990s, the majority of the nation’s citizens remained poor and heavily dependent on the agricultural sector for employment. This was largely a result of the country’s high rate of population increase, but political factors, such as the war of secession waged successfully by East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in 1971 and a coup d’état in 1977, also slowed economic growth and modernization. In 1994 Pakistan’s gross domestic product (GDP) was $52 billion.

 The government of Pakistan is deeply involved in directing the country’s economy, and most major industries have been nationalized. A government economic plan for 1978 to 1983, however, recommended that private capital be given a greater role in the industrial sector; the plan for 1983 to 1988 emphasized investment in hydroelectric power and rural development. A plan implemented in 1988 to liberalize internal and external trade and privatize more sectors of the economy had produced increases in the GDP growth rate, export revenues, and domestic and foreign investment by the early 1990s. In 1993 the government moved to reduce the nation’s deficit and lessen its reliance on foreign aid and loans, by introducing, among other measures, a national sales tax and increases in fuel taxes. The annual budget in the early 1990s included an estimated $9.4 billion in revenues and an estimated $10.9 billion in expenditures. Pakistan receives considerable economic assistance from foreign countries and from international organizations. The United States, which had imposed economic sanctions against Pakistan in 1990 in order to protest Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, lifted the sanctions in January 1996, clearing the way for economic assistance.

 

[3] India-Pakistan Wars

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001

The name given to the series of conflicts between India and Pakistan since 1947, when the Indian subcontinent was partitioned and the two countries became independent of Great Britain. The most violent outbreaks came in 1947–48, 1965, and 1971. The roots of the conflicts lie in the hostility between Hindus and Muslims and, initially, in the disposition of self-governing princely states.

The 1947–48 War

The first war arose over Kashmir, in NW India, in 1947 when Muslim subjects revolted and were supported by Pakistani troops. The Hindu ruler appealed to India for aid, agreeing to cede the state to India in return. India moved quickly to consolidate its position in Kashmir, pushing Pakistan’s “volunteers” back. Conflicts also arose in the Punjab and in Bengal. The undeclared war in Kashmir continued until Jan. 1, 1949, when a truce was arranged through UN mediation; negotiations between India and Pakistan began and lasted until 1954 without resolving the Kashmir problem. Pakistan controlled part of the area, Azad (Free) Kashmir, while India held most of the territory, which it annexed in 1957.

The 1965 War

The second war began in Apr., 1965, when fighting broke out in the Rann of Kachchh, a sparsely inhabited region along the West Pakistan–India border. In August fighting spread to Kashmir and to the Punjab, and in September Pakistani and Indian troops crossed the partition line between the two countries and launched air assaults on each other’s cities. After threats of intervention by China had been successfully opposed by the United States and Britain, Pakistan and India agreed to a UN-sponsored cease-fire and withdrew to the pre-August lines. Prime Minister Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri of India and President Ayub Khan of Pakistan met in Tashkent, USSR (now Toshkent, Uzbekistan), in Jan., 1966, and signed an agreement pledging continued negotiations and respect for the cease-fire conditions. After the Tashkent Declaration another period of relative peace ensued.

The 1971 War

Indo-Pakistani relations deteriorated when civil war erupted in Pakistan, pitting the West Pakistan army against East Pakistanis demanding greater autonomy. The fighting forced 10 million East Pakistani Bengalis to flee to India. When Pakistan attacked Indian airfields in Kashmir, India attacked both East and West Pakistan. It occupied the eastern half, which declared its independence as Bangladesh, on Dec. 6, 1971. Under great-power pressure, a UN cease-fire was arranged in mid-December, after Pakistan’s defeat. Pakistan lost its eastern half, an army of 100,000 soldiers, and was thrown into political turmoil. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto emerged as leader of Pakistan, and Mujibur Rahman as prime minister of Bangladesh. Tensions were alleviated by the Shimla accord of 1972, and by Pakistan’s recognition of Bangladesh in 1974, but tensions have periodically recurred.

 

[4] India and Pakistan - now pausing to rearm?

The Christian Science Monitor July 14, 1999, Robert Marquand, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Kashmir conflict leaves both countries questioning the quality of their weapons

With a rough mid-summer peace between India and Pakistan at hand, the question here is: What next?

            By all accounts, the next months and years will bring a major reappraisal of the military strength of both India and Pakistan, experts say - leading to enhanced weapons systems, armed forces, and military strategy.

              Improvements to military capability will be expensive and take place in a part of the world where 40 percent of the people earn less than a dollar a day.

            Neither India nor Pakistan is willing to regard a buildup or revamping as an arms race, and both sides state a commitment to rejoining appropriate dialogues. Yet the military lessons from what Indian officials call "the Kargil war" (a key town in the conflict), will involve further development of nuclear capability on both sides, and a major rearming and reequipping of conventional forces.

            "Kargil represents the failure of India's conventional military deterrence," argues retired Air Commodore Jasjit Singh, director of the Institute of Defense Studies and Analysis here.

            Even modest new military increases in India and Pakistan represent a significant departure from the spirit of the peace deal made in Lahore, Pakistan, last February between India and Pakistan's prime ministers. Moreover, the cause for the buildup may be placed as much on India's test of nuclear weapons in 1998, experts say, as on Pakistan's attempt to create international sympathy for claims on Kashmir by its support of militia there.

            Indian and Pakistani officials are not eager to discuss their nuclear weapons programs. But Western intelligence sources say both sides continue to refine and develop their potential. Last week US Secretary of Defense William Cohen warned that "recent conduct" by both states suggested they were in the process of weaponizing, a development not conducive to peace in the region.

            In April, India successfully tested the Agni-2 rocket, which has a range of about 1,300 miles. Pakistan tested the Ghauri-2 soon after, a nuclear-carrying rocket with a range of 1,700 miles. India is now at work on an Agni-3 with a range of more than 2,000 miles, capable of reaching deep into China. Pakistan has a Ghauri-3 on the table.

            On the conventional front, Indian military strategists are preparing not for large-scale border wars with Pakistan - their current strength - but for a series of Kargil-like operations in which Pakistani forces use guerrilla tactics in difficult terrain. "In the 21^st century, the operational doctrines of India will undergo a fundamental and qualitative change to meet new challenges," says Sreedhar, an analyst at the Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis. "Kargil is only the beginning."

            A large number of casualties and lack of preparedness in Kargil by the Indian military will likely result in the purchase or development of a wide array of new weapons systems that stress technology: laser-guided missiles, military satellites to monitor borders, early-warning systems, sensors, radars, night-vision equipment. High-tech weaponry costs in the first phases of purchase are estimated at $ 5 billion.

            Indian tank forces, air force, and heavy artillery are likely to be enhanced, sources say. The Army is buying 200 new 155 mm heavy guns - making its totals around 500 - with prospective sellers in Singapore, Finland, Sweden, Israel, Great Britain, France, and South Africa. Pakistan, which has few 155 mm, is reportedly seeking US firms to sell the weapons.

            For several years the Soviet MIG-based Indian Air Force has been recording numerous crashes in normal flight operations. Just 40 percent of the MIGs are in working order at any given time. Only late in the Kargil operation, when French military suppliers shipped laser technology for Indian French-built Mirage jets, was the Indian Air Force able to effectively target the mujahideen fighters in the mountain peaks of Kashmir. Indian Air Force officials are looking at adding Mirage-style aircraft, slower ground-fighting aircraft like the US-built A-10 Warthog (a formidable tank destroyer in the Gulf War), and also long-range bombers like the Russian-built Sukhoi-30, to carry nuclear weapons, sources say.

            Cash-strapped Pakistan is not expected to make the same degree of investment in military spending, though sources in Islamabad say that Pakistani costs for its conventional post-Kargil military will rise some $ 530 million. Pakistan's claims over Kashmir have long provided its military a rationale for steadily increasing budgets. Moreover, Pakistani generals can point to increases in Indian capability as a motivation for their own needs.

            As for the cause of the buildup, Indian officials point to Pakistan's support of Islamic revolutionaries, and the Kargil adventure explains the need. Yet many Western sources, including US officials, point to India's test of nuclear weapons as the initial falling apple.

            They argue first that Pakistan found, to its delight, that after the nuclear tests of 1998, the international community, long neglectful of this region, was suddenly paying attention to South Asia. And not only South Asia - but the Kashmir dispute in particular. Almost overnight, a decade of Pakistan's painstaking and often fruitless, snail's-pace negotiations with India over Kashmir gave way to high-level diplomatic interest, marquee lights, and the furrowed brows of presidents and prime ministers whose defense analysts flagged Kashmir as a likely "flashpoint."

              Secondly, the nuclearization of India and Pakistan actually changed the military dynamics on the ground. Pakistan, soundly defeated in two wars by India in 1965 and 1971, was held on the borders for years, and in its military calculations, by India's overwhelming conventional military advantage. Any cross-border adventures would likely result in a thrashing by India.  But now, the margins of Pakistani military adventurism could be raised beyond the former status quo - since India would be unlikely to retaliate with the same impunity due to the danger of nuclear use. "Pokhran [where India's nuclear test took place] foretold more trouble in places like Kashmir in the years to come," says Kanti Bajbai, a disarmament expert at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.

            In the short term, India may engage in chest-thumping and a buildup due to elections now scheduled for Sept. 4. The former ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which tested the nuclear weapons, came into office on a platform of martial vigor and Hindu nationalist sentiment. The party was damaged by the ease with which Pakistani forces occupied the Himalyan peaks of Kashmir. The elections therefore are likely to stress the need for bigger and better guns.  

Perhaps more markedly, a reason for a buildup is a significant change in the Indian establishment over Pakistan. A broad range of moderates and Indian peaceniks who pushed reconciliation have been angered by the bloodletting of the Kargil war.  

India  

1997 population: 967 million

1997 military budget: $ 9.9 billion

Increase over 1996: 4.8%

Outlay as a share of GDP: 2.6%

As a share of government spending: 15.3%

Total regular forces: 1,145,000

Army: 980,000

Navy: 55,000

Air Force: 110,000

Reserves: 528,400

Ballistic missiles: Unknown number of nuclear-capable short-range Prithvi in service. Agni, now in development, capable of being turned into a nuclear intermediate-range ballistic missile. Nuclear missile program and possible naval nuclear missile program given new importance following India's testing of five nuclear devices (thought to be warheads) in May 1998.

Pakistan

1997 population: 132 million

1997 military budget: $ 3.3 billion

Increase over 1995: -10.8%

Outlay as a share of GDP: 5.4%

As a share of government spending: 24.6%

Total regular forces: 587,000

Army: 520,000

Navy: 22,000

Air force: 45,000

Reserves: 513,000

Ballistic missiles: Hatf-1 short-range missile: 18. Hatf-2 short-range missile under development. Unknown number of indigenously produced Hatf-3 short-range missiles. Unknown number of nuclear-capable M-11 short-range missiles (from China). Medium-range nuclear-capable Ghauri missile tested in April 1998 (believed to be North Korean No Dong).

Medium-range nuclear-capable Shaheen-1 and long-range nuclear capable Shaheen-2 said to be under development. Nuclear missile program given new importance following Pakistan's testing of six nuclear devices in May 1998.

 

[5] Fears Encircle War Games on India-Pakistan Border

The New York Times February 18, 2000, By CELIA W. DUGGER NEW DELHI,

More than 100 Indian tanks are churning up billowing clouds of sand as they rumble across the Rajasthani desert this week in war games about 60 miles from India's border with its longtime foe Pakistan.

Just a month before President Clinton visits the region, the Indian military's very public rehearsal of its limited-war strategy is yet another sign of the heightened tensions between these nuclear-armed neighbors, whose leaders have recently been thinking and speaking about the possibility of nuclear war.

The Clinton administration is wrestling with whether Mr. Clinton will stop in Pakistan to meet briefly with its army chief, who took power in a coup four months ago. Fearful that India and Pakistan are headed for more armed conflict, South Asia experts are divided over whether a presidential visit would help rein in Pakistan's provocative military tactics in the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir or would legitimize military rule in Pakistan.

At India's invitation, military attaches from 22 countries, including the United States, have been flown to the desert this week to watch India's exercises, which began Monday and are to end on Saturday. Mock battles have featured offensive strikes and the rapid deployment of the tanks, 20,000 troops and 40 fighter jets.

India's defense minister and its army chief said last month that India must be prepared to wage an intense but limited war with Pakistan if the need arises, even in the shadow of the nuclear threat. Indian Army officers said today that this week's exercises are not meant to be provocative, but are the kind of routine practice that keeps their troops and machines from getting rusty.

"You train for that, you prepare for that," one senior officer said in an interview at army headquarters here. "There's nothing aggressive about that."

India notified Pakistan of the exercises two weeks in advance, but Pakistani military officials said they nonetheless see the exercises as muscle-flexing by India. "We are vigilant," Brig. Rashid Qureshi, a spokesman for the Pakistani military, said in a telephone interview from Rawalpindi. "We are monitoring what they're doing. And if it's felt that Pakistan needs to take safeguards, I'm sure it will."

Relations between India and Pakistan have been in a worsening spiral since last summer, when Pakistani forces infiltrated Indian-held Kashmir -- the disputed territory that Secretary oof State Madeleine K. Albright recently called "the fuse" in this troubled relationship -- and Indian troops battled to drive them out.

The Dec. 24 hijacking of an Indian Airlines commercial jet -- which India claims was masterminded by Pakistani military intelligence agents -- further deepened animosities, particulaarly because the Indian government was harshly criticized at home for freeing three jailed militants opposed to Indian rule of Kashmir to win release of more than 150 hostages.

India and Pakistan, which started high-level peace talks a year ago, broke off negotiations last summer and the gap between them just seems to keep widening. Pakistan's military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, said he wanted to meet with India's prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, but only if Kashmir is the main item on the agenda. Mr. Vajpayee said he is willing to talk to Pakistan only if he sees evidence that it is reigning in what it regards a terrorist violence in Kashmir.

Kashmir, claimed by both countries, is now divided by the so-called Line of Control into portions held by India and Pakistan. Every few days, militants who Western intelligence analysts say are supported by Pakistan kill a few Indian soldiers or security agents in Indian-held Kashmir.

Pakistan, which followed India in testing nuclear weapons in May 1998, has been unwilling to promise that it will not use nuclear weapons first. It is far smaller than India and has weaker conventional forces.

In an interview with Doordarshan, India's state television station, taped on Feb. 4 and broadcast Feb. 7, General Musharraf said nuclear weapons should not be used but raised the possibility that they would be used if Pakistan's "national integrity is threatened."

"I wouldn't say there are chances," he said. "If at all India escalates on the Line of Control in Kashmir, there can be chances," he said.

Mr. Vajpayee, who usually speaks in measured phrases, spoke harshly on Feb. 6 at a memorial for Indian soldiers killed last summer in Kashmir, saying that India would strike back if Pakistan hit first.

"Pakistan is threatening a nuclear war, but do they even know what it means?" he said. "They think they will drop one bomb and they'll win and we'll lose. This won't happen. We have said we won't be the first to use nuclear weapons, but if anyone uses them against us, we will not wait for our annihilation."

India's strategy since the hijacking ended on Dec. 31 has been to isolate Pakistan. It has argued vehemently that the United States should declare Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism. And officials here have made it clear that they do not want Mr. Clinton to visit Pakistan or to try to inject himself into efforts to resolve India's differences with Pakistan over Kashmir.

Responding to expressions of alarm in Washington about the state of relations between India and Pakistan, Mr. Vajpayee last week categorically stated that no other country would be allowed "to meddle in our bilateral relations or problems."

            And in an interview published today in the French daily Le Figaro, Mr. Vajpayee advised President Clinton to skip Pakistan.

He was quoted as saying "a visit to Pakistan while this country is under military dictatorship and sponsors Islamic terrorism around the world would be very badly received by Indian public opinion."

 

[6] Subcontinental stand-off

The Financial Times of London February 22, 2000 By DAVID GARDNER

A year ago this week, Atal Behari Vajpayee, the Indian prime minister, took a bus trip across the Pakistani border to meet his counterpart, Nawaz Sharif. Out of that emotional encounter came the Lahore declaration, raising hopes that the two newly nuclear-armed enemies might settle half a century of dispute over the Himalayan state of Kashmir. How misplaced that optimism now seems.

One year on, New Delhi and Islamabad have begun a chilling escalation of rhetoric, with both capitals openly discussing the possibility of their fourth war since 1947. The sense of drama has been heightened by American alarm, ahead of President Bill Clinton's visit to India next month.

The deterioration in relations between the Indian subcontinent's Hindu and Muslim cousins over the past year can be traced back to last summer's prolonged conflict in the Kashmiri mountains, after a Pakistan-backed incursion near Kargil across the Line of Control (LoC) that divides the disputed territory. Then, in October, Pakistan's military ousted Nawaz Sharif in a coup led by General Pervez Musharraf, the man Delhi holds responsible for Kargil.

By then, the Pakistan-supported insurgency of the predominantly Muslim people of Kashmir had risen to a new peak.  Separatist militants started carrying the fight into Indian army headquarters in Srinagar, the Kashmiri capital.

To cap it all, at Christmas, an Indian Airlines flight was hijacked to Kandahar in Afghanistan, where the ruling Taliban practices its neo-medieval version of Islamist government under the sole remaining sponsorship of Pakistan. Delhi was forced to free three Kashmiri militants in exchange for the airliner's passengers and crew. It came as little surprise when clashes resumed shortly afterwards between the Pakistani and Indian armies, or when both sides this month restated their claims to all of Kashmir.

As if this territorial dispute were not enough, the two leaders warned each other they would use nuclear weapons if they felt sufficiently threatened. "We are being threatened with a nuclear attack; do they (the Pakistanis) understand what this means?" Mr. Vajpayee asked. "If they think we will wait for them to drop a bomb and face destruction, they are mistaken."

Gen. Musharraf, in an interview on Indian state TV, conspicuously dodged giving any commitment to "no first use" of nuclear weapons. "I have said very clearly that nuclear weapons should not be used," the general said. "However, when our national integrity is threatened, then we will take a decision at that time; we will take a decision when the occasion arises."

Small wonder then that Mr. Clinton's response has been to remind the two nuclear rivals that their enmity has become a global issue. "I want to make a trip which maximizes the possibilities not only for constructive partnership for the US in the years ahead," the president said, "but even more urgently for peace in that troubled part of the world."

However, India does not agree with Pakistan on inviting Washington in as a mediator. Delhi's long-standing position is that Kashmir can be resolved only in bilateral talks with Pakistan, whereas Islamabad, Washington's ally throughout the cold war, has always tried to enhance its claim to the territory by internationalizing the dispute.

Once the Pakistan military seized power in October, the US - alarmed at the turn of events - began to intensify pressure on India to "engage" with its neighbor. More recently, although the White House has made plans for Mr. Clinton to visit only India and Bangladesh next month, it refuses to rule out the possibility of him stopping over in Pakistan. To Indians across the political spectrum, all this seems unjust, and tends to strengthen the harder-line constituency behind the Hindu revivalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), which rules in coalition with regional allies.

Mr. Vajpayee's advisers say it is almost impossible for him to make a gesture of reconciliation. This is not, as usually stated, because Pakistan is under military rule; Mr. Vajpayee himself, as foreign minister in the 1977 Janata Dal government, went to Pakistan for talks with General Zia ul-Haq, the late military dictator. The point now, in Indian eyes, is Islamabad's belligerent intentions and terrorist connections. "Their reply to (the talks in) Lahore was Kargil, (stepped up fighting in) Kashmir and (the hijacking to) Kandahar," as one prime ministerial aide puts it.

India, moreover, regards US analysis of the situation in Pakistan as misguided and redolent of Pakistani influence. Washington has been telling Delhi that the Pakistani armed forces are the last bulwark against Taliban-influenced Islamic fundamentalists coming to power, which would not only endanger India and south Asia but complicate security in the Middle East and central Asia too. Officials in Delhi respond to this in two, sometimes contradictory, ways.

On the one hand, they want to take advantage of America's obsession with the terror network of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi holy warrior being sheltered by the Taliban, whom Washington blames for the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. At last, Indian officials feel, the Americans are beginning to understand what they face in Kashmir.

But at the same time, India inverts US analysis, arguing that Islamist power has grown out of proportion to its influence in Pakistan precisely because of army and intelligence services patronage. "The only way the Islamists gain influence is when the military is in power," says an Indian official. "The three props of dictatorship in Pakistan are the mullahs, the army and the Americans."

The "mullahs with nukes" scenario that so horrifies the US cuts little ice in India. As Bharat Karnad of New Delhi's Center for Policy Research and the government's National Security Advisory Board puts it: "The Pakistanis have always argued that they are near the brink - like a man on a ledge threatening to take you with him. But the question is: how will talking to Pakistan influence the powers in Islamabad, without convincing them of the efficacy of their present policies?"

India nevertheless feels its position is strong. Its restraint last summer during Kargil, resisting the urge to cross over into Pakistani Kashmir, was internationally applauded. Ten rounds of "strategic dialogue" between Strobe Talbott, US assistant secretary of state, and Jaswant Singh, Indian foreign minister, have brought the two democracies probably closer than at any time in India's independent history. It is hard to dispute that nuclear status has bought India what Mr. Singh calls "the currency of power".

What India fails to acknowledge is how the nuclear stand-off simultaneously weakened its position. Pakistan, much the lesser power until the reciprocal nuclear tests, suddenly won an equality it had never enjoyed on the ground. Second, Islamabad acquired an incentive to keep raising the military stakes in Kashmir: it knows that pushing the Kashmiri button will bring the US running.

"Clearly the stakes are being raised," says Raja Mohan, a leading strategic affairs analyst. At one level, this is "puzzling, because we don't want the Americans to poke their noses into it (Kashmir)". But at another level, Mr. Mohan thinks, India is "challenging the US to do something about Pakistan".

What India is saying, Mr. Mohan argues, is essentially this: we took the peace initiative at Lahore, and in return we got Kargil, Kashmir and Kandahar. "Tell your friends (in Pakistan) to cease supporting terrorism, because we are not going to be immobilized because of the nuclear factor."

This analysis would certainly explain renewed attempts by George Fernandes, the Indian defense minister, to define a doctrine of "limited war" - the idea that seasonal skirmishing in the Himalayas, and indeed full-scale conventional war, is still possible despite India and Pakistan's nuclear capability.

It is the scope for escalation inherent in this still half-baked idea - more than the rhetorical escalation of recent weeks - that may turn out to be the truly scary aspect of the stand-off in south Asia.

 

[7] A Summit Meeting of Old Foes: India and Pakistan

The New York Times July 14, 2001 By CELIA W. DUGGER NEW DELHI

In the more than two years since India and Pakistan fought a brutal little war in the frigid, lifeless reaches of the Himalayas, the leaders of the two nuclear-armed foes have not sat down to talk about how to live in peace.

But this morning, at India's invitation, Gen. Pervez Musharraf -- the Pakistani military ruler identified by most Indians as the nefarious author of Pakistan's incursion into Indian territory in 1999 -- arrived for a three-day summit meeting that will begin here in the capital with a ceremonial reception. General Musharraf's flight landed at a military airport this morning, and he emerged from the plane wearing not an army uniform, but a long, cream colored jacket known as a sherwani and loose white pants that befit the new status he has given himself as president of Pakistan. He cordially shook hands with a collection of Indian officials. And later today, he and India's prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, will meet for the first time.

The general and Mr. Vajpayee, have no set agenda and no scripted finale for their two days of talks, which will take place in Agra in a hotel near the Taj Mahal.

But they are certain to discuss Kashmir, the ravishingly beautiful territory that both countries claim and that some analysts fear could become a nuclear flash point.

The outcome is so uncertain that the two leaders have not scheduled a joint news conference for Monday, the last day of the summit meeting. As bargaining positions leading up to the talks have hardened in the last week, both sides have cautioned that no breakthroughs should be expected.

Their modest hope seems to be that they can pick up the threads of a conversation that were abruptly snipped two summers ago. It was then that India discovered Pakistani soldiers dug into craggy peaks in the Kargil sector of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir.

That occurred just months after Mr. Vajpayee had journeyed to Pakistan and the nations had promised to settle their differences at the bargaining table.

"It is always good to keep talking," Mr. Vajpayee told a Pakistani journalist on Thursday.

Progress in the negotiations will largely depend on whether the general and the prime minister can find a way to begin thinking about a compromise on India's and Pakistan's carefully nurtured, diametrically opposed positions on Kashmir, a territory they have been fighting and dying over since their independence from Britain in 1947.

It would be difficult to conjure two men whose styles are more different or who are better placed to lead their peoples away from violent conflict.

Both have bases in hawkish constituencies -- Mr. Vajpayee in the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and General Musharraf in the Pakistani Army -- that would help them make a deal with less risk of being called soft-headed at home.

In India, many people think the country has a better chance negotiating something lasting with a military ruler than with the weak elected leaders Pakistan had during the last decade. Col. V. N. Thapar, whose son Vijyand, 22, was killed during an assault on Three Pimple Knoll in the Kargil war in June 1999, thinks it makes sense to talk to General Musharraf.

"He's in a good position to deliver peace," Colonel Thapar said. "All the authority and power is vested in his hands. He can take the decision. It is a very opportune moment."

The colonel's wife, Tripta, whose living room is a shrine to the memory of their son, agreed. "Our son can't come back," she said. "But I don't want other mothers to lose their sons. He's the man who has the authority to stop this terrorism."

In the fractured democratic politics of India, Mr. Vajpayee has a different kind of authority than the general, but his party has traditionally been seen as hard-line on India's dealings with Pakistan, an Islamic nation that is smaller and economically weaker than India, a secular, predominantly Hindu country.

Mr. Vajpayee is himself perhaps best known to the world for secretly deciding that India should conduct nuclear tests in 1998, but his reputation in India is that of a peacemaker.

His knees creaky with arthritis, Mr. Vajpayee, 76, is given to enigmatic nods and ponderous silences in conversation, but he is still widely revered here as an orator, poet and elder statesman whose half-century in public life and benevolent, grandfatherly appearance have endowed him with a credibility that transcends party.

In contrast, General Musharraf, 57, is a brisk, supremely self-confident former commando who loves to talk in long, free-form interviews. He has methodically consolidated his power since he took over as Pakistan's ruler in a bloodless coup in October 1999. He has exiled the prime minister he toppled and recently elevated himself to the presidency, a civilian post.

But his greatest authority still emanates from his as yet unchallenged leadership of the army, the most powerful institution in Pakistan and the one with the deepest stake in continuing hostilities with India.

Generals have ruled Pakistan for 26 of its 53 years. And the army's identity, as well as its claim on a huge share of the impoverished nation's public resources, grew out of three full-fledged wars with India.

For months General Musharraf has seemed like a politician on the campaign trail, trying to convince the public in a barrage of interviews with Indian journalists that he is not the demon he has been made out to be for his role in the Kargil conflict.

"We must not live in history," he told the Times of India last week. "I have been saying this all along because if we talk of Kargil, we will open a Pandora's box."

For General Musharraf, the bitterly intertwined histories of India and Pakistan have a profoundly personal meaning. He is arriving in New Delhi, not just as a the leader of India's most dangerous adversary, but as a native son who will venture to his birthplace today in the alleys of old Delhi on Saturday for the first time since he was 4. Days before India and Pakistan gained their independence in 1947 -- severed from each other in a moment known as Partition -- the general's Muslim family fled to Pakistan, narrowly escaping the cataclysm of religious hatred in which perhaps a million Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs were killed.

And as the general has made clear day after day, in speech after speech, that he will insist at the talks in Agra that India deal with another piece of unfinished business from Partition: the fate of Kashmir, India's only predominantly Muslim state.

India's and Pakistan's claims on Kashmir, based on conflicting narratives of a complicated shared history, have been repeated so often that they have become a kind of mantra and reflect the two countries' divergent conceptions of nationhood.

Pakistan maintains that Kashmir should have been given the right to choose in a referendum whether to join India or Pakistan, while India maintains that Kashmir is an inalienable part of the nation and proof of its secular heritage.

India says it is willing to talk about Kashmir as one of many issues that the two nations should address, including trade, cultural exchanges, the easing of travel restrictions and measures to reduce the risks of nuclear war.

And since July 4, India has made a series of good-will gestures, promising to release Pakistani prisoners, make it less difficult for Pakistanis to get visas and give scholarships to Pakistani students. But Pakistan did not respond warmly to those initiatives, seeing them as an attempt by India to dilute the focus on Kashmir, analysts said.

 

[8] Kashmir Impasse: India and Pakistan Are Stuck on Semantics

The New York Times July 22, 2001 By BARRY BEARAK and CELIA W. DUGGER NEW DELHI

Since India and Pakistan's summit meeting ended on Monday without agreement -- and without even the polite formality of a public handshake -- the two nuclear rivals have been alternately upbeat and downcast about each other and their future relations. They act the part of wavering daisy petal pickers: we hate them, we hate them not.

Nothing solid came out of the talks, but the news is all at once better and worse than that, better because India and Pakistan have promised to meet again and worse because what they cannot seem to agree on is so basic a step. After two and a half years without official dialogue, these adversaries were not engaged in the type of negotiation that has statesmen poring over a map, pointing at watersheds and mountain ranges, divvying up contested territory. Nor were they discussing troop deployments, bartering over who might pull back here if the other pulled back there.

Rather than anything momentous, their disagreement now -- as often before -- was about the phraseology to be used in describing what they would talk about if they ever seriously got down to talking. They again slid off the slippery tongue of semantics.

Pakistan wants India to admit that the Himalayan region of Kashmir is the core problem between them. After all, it has been the cause of two of their three wars. Each holds a portion of it. Their troops face each other along a cease-fire line.

But the Indians refuse to acknowledge that this Himalayan territory is even in "dispute." By their reckoning, to do so would be to conceive of the inconceivable, that some areas of Kashmir may rightfully belong outside their federation.

Instead, the Indians want to talk about "cross-border terrorism," the militants who sneak into the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir -- either from Pakistan or the Pakistani-controlled part of Kashmir -- to wage guerrilla combat.

But this terminology displeases Pakistan, which prefers "indigenous freedom fighters." And while it is an open secret that the Pakistanis supply these militants with money and training and guns, this is something never to be spoken of in public.

"Indians and Pakistanis, when not talking about Kashmir, are some of the most intelligent people in the world," said Vinod Mehta, editor in chief of Outlook, an Indian news weekly. "But when they talk about this subject, they sound like morons."

"Everybody in this country knows that Kashmir is the main issue between India and Pakistan," he added. "But official India is not prepared to admit it. It's farcical. And it's farcical that the admission seems more important to Pakistan than solving the issue."

Mr. Mehta participated in what is now considered the pivotal episode of the summit meeting. On Monday morning, Pakistan's military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, held a breakfast session with some of India's leading journalists. The encounter was expected to be off the record. But Pakistan's state-run television station and a private Indian news channel, Star News, had arranged to rebroadcast the event shortly after its conclusion.

As a result, General Musharraf spoke directly to the entire subcontinent for more than an hour. A man occasionally short of patience, he is never at a loss for words. He was direct, forceful and passionate, speaking at 100 miles per hour, with gusts up to 180.

"Let us not remain under any illusions that the main issue confronting us is Kashmir, and I am not saying anything unrealistic and imaginary," he said. "I'll keep saying it whether anyone agrees with it or not."

India's leaders were furious. They prefer the Marquess of Queensberry rules of diplomacy, and here was the general revealing the trade secrets of sensitive negotiations.

The worst of it was, he was very convincing, especially without India's prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, around to debate his version of reality. The Indians fumed: if the general wants to talk about reality, what about the terrorists he sends across the border? What about Kargil, the war he started in Kashmir in 1999 that torpedoed the last effort at peace?

Even before the summit meeting ended, the upstaged Indian leadership was excoriated at home. Mr. Vajpayee had initiated the talks. He was supposed to star in the role of peacemaker. How was the general allowed to steal the show?

In the days since the talks, the public signals from both sides have been a confused blinking of red and green lights on the prospects for further negotiations.

The Pakistanis left Agra, the home of the Taj Mahal and scene of the meeting, saying they were frustrated because Indian negotiators would agree on a carefully drafted deal only to insist on changes later.

But the next morning, the Indian government characterized the talks as useful, if disappointing. Jaswant Singh, the external affairs minister, said the meetings had been an "invaluable opportunity" to understand each other and he proclaimed a readiness to "pick up the threads" and continue the bilateral mending.

That Tuesday, the Pakistani foreign minister, Abdul Sattar, gave a surprisingly effusive, optimistic news conference in Islamabad. He said the two sides had come close to making a deal that was still in reach if they would build on their progress.

But by Wednesday, the mood had turned noticeably chillier in India. A spokeswoman said that Pakistan and India would have to start from scratch in any future negotiations.

On Friday evening, the general, again his voluble self, gave a two-hour news conference in Islamabad. He acknowledged India's irritation with him over the broadcast breakfast session and said that when the prime minister came on a reciprocal visit, he would arrange a meeting with the entire Pakistani news media and tell Mr. Vajpayee, "Please, speak your heart out."

The custody battle for Kashmir has been going on since 1947, when largely Hindu India and predominantly Muslim Pakistan became independent from the British Empire.

And while both nations continue their claims, many -- if not most -- of the people who live in the embattled region favor independence. "Azadi," or "freedom," was their cry in 1989 when an insurrection began on the Indian side of Kashmir. Pakistan encouraged the uprising and then bent it to its will. New Delhi responded with a huge infusion of soldiers who often displayed little regard for human rights. In the past 12 years, more than 35,000 lives have been lost to the violence.

If all the parties -- Pakistan, India and the Kashmiris themselves -- ever get past the preparatory semantics and into actual negotiations, they will find solutions complicated.

Kashmir is a generic term for what used to be the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, now home to an estimated 13.7 million people. While most of the Kashmir Valley is Muslim, most of Jammu is Hindu and half of the region known as Ladakh is Buddhist. The population is disparate as well as desperate.