SAARC interrupted
The Ministry of External Affairs in South Block might get a sense of how the rest of South Asia looks at its reluctance to go to the Islamabad South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit if it read something more than the New Delhi English dailies. If Mr Yashwant Sinha were to call for the papers from 10 December, the day after Pakistan announced that it was indefinitely postponing the 12th SAARC summit because of Indian dithering, he would find coverage somewhat different.
In the Indian English dailies, amidst the confusion of the Gujarat elections and the uproar over an absconding bandit, SAARC merited barely a mention. The papers in all the other countries of South Asia, some of them resignedly, reported the story on the front page. While Mr Sinha tried smartly to lay the blame for the scuttling on Islamabad, the rest of South Asia was not buying. A poll in the Nepali Times weekly (20-26 December) revealed that 52 percent respondents believed that India was solely responsible for the postponement of the summit, nearly 20 percent more than believed that both it and Pakistan were accountable. Only 13.6 percent voted that Pakistan was to blame.
India was burnt badly in the last summit, where it lost the public relations round to Pakistan when Musharraf , unscripted, proffered his hand to a reluctant Vajpayee on stage in front of international media. Besides not wanting to offer the flamboyant general one more opportunity to strut about (with him needing the good press more now than last year, given the downturn in his image), India let it be known that the prime minister would not meet the general until and unless Pakistan stopped cross-border terrorism across the LOC.
Now there is a bit of illogic there. If India so wants to follow the SAARC charter to the letter and not discuss bilateral issues at SAARC meetings, how come it is willing to use a bilateral issue (cross-border terrorism) to not meet multilaterally? For future reference, let us use this line of argument – if we cannot meet because of a bilateral problem, then by all means let us discuss bilateral issues when we do meet.