DATE=12/16/1999
TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT
TITLE=YEARENDER- INDIA - PAKISTAN
NUMBER=5-45018
BYLINE=JIM TEEPLE
DATELINE=NEW DELHI
CONTENT=
VOICED AT:
INTRO: 1999 was a year of turmoil in South Asia.
After a promising beginning, relations between South
Asia's two biggest countries, India and Pakistan
deteriorated to their lowest point in years. As we
hear from VOA's Jim Teeple in this yearend report,
since both countries now possess nuclear weapons the
world paid attention in 1999 when India and Pakistan
came close to fighting their fourth war.
Text: It all began with a cricket match in January.
For the first time in a decade, Pakistani cricket
players traveled to India to play their Indian
counterparts. While right-wing nationalists
threatened to disrupt the matches, their threats never
materialized and it seemed that as the year began the
goodwill generated by the "friendship series," of
cricket could set a new tone for India Pakistan
relations.
The "friendship series" of cricket was soon followed
by an even more dramatic goodwill gesture. India's
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee announced he would
travel to the Pakistani city of Lahore on a bus - to
meet and talk with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz
Sharif. On the eve of Mr. Vajpayee's trip his foreign
minister Jaswant Singh said India was willing to
discuss all issues with its traditional rival.
// SINGH ACTUALITY //
Any proposal that is put forward and which is aimed at
enhancing amity and friendship and which is directed
at the welfare of the two peoples and countries shall
be given the most serious consideration.
// END ACTUALITY //
Less than a year earlier both India and Pakistan had
conducted nuclear tests and in Lahore both leaders
agreed to try and reduce the risk of an accidental
nuclear conflict - as well as agreeing to give advance
notification of ballistic missile flight tests. Mr.
Vajpayee and Mr. Sharif also agreed to intensify
efforts to resolve the Kashmir issue. The territory
of Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan and
both countries claim it as their own. India controls
two thirds of Kashmir and Pakistan one third.
Indian newspapers were upbeat following the talks.
The Times of India said "the ice has been broken
between India and Pakistan," while the Pioneer
Newspaper said both countries had taken a "quantum
leap" towards peace. The public in both India and
Pakistan was also upbeat.
// OPT // Shopping at New Delhi's crowded
Connaught Place, A-K Singh, a young businessman said
he especially welcomed the talks since both countries
had conducted nuclear tests the previous year.
// OPTIONAL SINGH ACTUALITY //
I think this is the biggest, or is going to be the
biggest development in relations between India and
Pakistan. After the nuclear tests, things were harsh,
now they are going to mellow, and India - Pakistan
relations should improve in a historical way.
// END OPTIONAL ACTUALITY //
Others however were not so optimistic. 85 year-old
Jugal Kishore Khanna, a retiree also shopping at
Connaught Place had witnessed the partition of the
subcontinent between India and Pakistan. Mr. Khanna
had also lived through the three wars both countries
had fought since independence fifty years earlier. He
said the issue of who controls Kashmir would continue
to divide the two nations despite the goodwill
generated in Lahore.
// OPTIONAL KHANNA ACTUALITY //
The question of Kashmir will still be there. I hope
they do something but I don't think there is any
solution to that at present.
// END OPTIONAL ACTUALITY //
Mr. Khanna's pessimism turned out to be well founded.
// END OPT //
Initial optimism that the talks would lead to better
relations faded quickly. Just two months after Atal
Behari Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif met in Lahore an
Indian army squad on patrol high in the mountainous
Kargil region of Kashmir stumbled into a group of
heavily armed guerrilla infiltrators on the Indian
side of the Line of Control, which divides Kashmir.
As it later became clear, even as Mr. Sharif and Mr.
Vajpayee were sitting down to talk in Lahore, small
bands of guerrilla infiltrators were making their way
into Indian territory from the Pakistan side of the
Kashmir border. The guerrilla infiltrators occupied a
series of high ridges and began shelling the main
east-west highway in Kashmir. In an instant the
optimism generated by the Lahore meeting was gone.
Pakistan denied being behind the operation saying it
only offered diplomatic and moral support to Kashmiri
separatists. Prime Minister Vajpayee rushed tens of
thousands of troops to the region and as fighting
intensified between the Indian army and the guerrilla
infiltrators he warned the conflict was dangerous for
both countries.
// VAJPAYEE ACTUALITY //
It is a serious situation. It is a situation that is
fraught with danger. It is a situation that has
arisen from one simple fact -- the decision of
Pakistan to cross the line of control, to send its men
and material to occupy our territory. No government
can tolerate such an incursion and our government
certainly will not.
// END ACTUALITY //
News of the fighting in Kashmir came just as both
India and Pakistan were marking the one-year
anniversary of their nuclear tests. Just one month
earlier both countries had tested mid-range ballistic
missiles sparking fears of an all-out arms race in
South Asia. Governments around the world urged India
to show restraint and not cross the Line of Control
and attack Pakistan. In the end India heeded the
calls for restraint and in the process gained the
diplomatic high ground. Following talks in
Washington, Prime Minister Sharif agreed to work to
withdraw the infiltrators and diplomats around the
world breathed a sigh of relief when it became clear
that the world's two newest nuclear powers would not
go to war.
// REST OPT // Even when it became clear that India
and Pakistan would not go to war over Kashmir in 1999
debate continued in India over whether New Delhi
really needed a nuclear deterrence. Following the
1998 nuclear tests both India and Pakistan were
slapped with economic sanctions. Some in India also
argued that their country - a traditional advocate of
global disarmament in international forums -- had lost
its moral authority to speak on such issues. Kanti
Bajpai a prominent New Delhi academic said India's
nuclear tests had locked his country into a difficult
and costly arms race with its neighbors.
// BAJPAI ACTUALITY //
The bomb locks you into a more difficult and more
costly arms race in fact because everyone has to
respond to everyone else's missile and nuclear program
and changes. In fact the claim that nuclear tests
give you strategic independence is a perverse one - it
gives you the opposite. It locks you into a kind of
treadmill that you cannot get off.
// END ACT //
Others disagreed. Commodore Uday Bhaskar an active
duty Indian Navy officer and prominent defense analyst
said India needed a nuclear deterrence.
// BHASKAR ACTUALITY //
India should stay the course. This is not a time for
us to be apologetic. There is nothing that India has
done that warrants any kind of apology. Neither is it
a time for euphoria. We have to stay the course in
terms of being committed to deterrence but we have
qualified it as minimum credible deterrence. We are
not talking about thousands of weapons.
// END ACTUALITY //
Later in the year India issued what it called a draft
nuclear policy - outlining a ballistic missile defense
- based on land, sea and air missile systems. The
draft also outlined the circumstances under which
India would use nuclear weapons -- saying India would
only do so in retaliation -- after a nuclear first
strike. Pakistan immediately criticized the draft
policy, calling it provocative.
Just a few weeks later on the eve of Prime Minister
Vajpayee's swearing in to a second term as Prime
Minister, his counterpart, Nawaz Sharif was overthrown
in a bloodless coup. Mr. Vajpayee and other senior
Indian officials called the coup in Islamabad a matter
of grave concern. Despite their differences, Atal
Behari Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif enjoyed a personal
chemistry - a chemistry Mr. Vajpayee is not known to
share with Pakistan's new military leader Pervez
Musharraf. (Signed)
neb/jlt/plm
16-Dec-1999 07:59 AM EDT (16-Dec-1999 1259 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
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