The Hindu : It's their choice: India

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Dec 10, 2002

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It's their choice: India

By Amit Baruah

NEW DELHI Dec. 9. ``It's a choice that they have made,'' the Foreign Office spokesman here said in response to Pakistan's decision to indefinitely postpone the SAARC summit after India refused to confirm the dates for the Islamabad meeting. India, he claimed, had ``always been committed'' to the SAARC and its processes, but alleged that every meaningful proposal on trade and economic issues had been systematically ``sabotaged'' by Pakistan.

According to sources, Pakistan's decision was triggered by the fact that Islamabad wanted ``lead time'' of at least a month to prepare for the meeting but India was not ready to confirm the dates. In a sense, Pakistan has ``bailed out'' India from taking a public position on the SAARC meeting by announcing that the summit had been indefinitely deferred. But, the Indian establishment preferred to keep mum on the dates and wait for Pakistan to take the next step, which they have now taken. The sources said that the summit meeting had been ``put off'' at a time when the official-level talks on a draft treaty framework for a South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) were going quite well.

In fact, yet another meeting of officials on the issue is scheduled to be held in Kathmandu later this month. On the next step, the sources maintained that informal consultations through the good offices of the SAARC Secretariat on Kathmandu would continue on a fresh set of dates. ``This will take a few months,'' they added.

The Foreign Office spokesman took the view that the whole issue was not about agreeing to dates for a SAARC summit, but about making progress on the economic issues within the Regional Association.

From India's point of view, if the Prime Minister, A.B. Vajpayee, had decided to travel to Islamabad on January 11-13, it would have entailed a decision on two issues — a return of the Indian High Commissioner and a restoration of civil aviation links. The sources said if Mr. Vajpayee had travelled to Pakistan, then India would have liked to have a High Commissioner in place and, obviously, he would have flown in his special aircraft. They said Mr. Vajpayee would not have travelled by the circuitous route that is being followed by the few travellers who are able to afford travel between India and Pakistan.

At this point of time, these were two decisions that India did not want to take, given the tough line it wanted to project against Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. Also, though officially New Delhi doesn't want to say this, given the fact that SAARC is not supposed to take up bilateral matters, the issue of cross-border terrorism continues to loom large on the India-Pakistan horizon.

It is almost certain that Pakistan-based terrorist groups would have staged a high-profile attack before or during the visit of the Prime Minister to Islamabad. And this, clearly, was an embarrassment that India could have done without.

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