Salaam Haider

BY now people ate used to seeing foreign secretaries of Pakistan and India shake hands, embrace and smile for the cameras. But a certain sense of curiosity prevailed in Pakistan as Salman Haider landed as head of the Indian delegation to start a flesh round of talks in Islamabad. The Indian foreign secretary is a Muslim and it is not often that the 'enemy' sends a believer to the Land of the Pure, and that too such a senior official.

Almost on cue, reports started trickling out that Haider would offer prayers at Islamabad's picturesque Faisal mosque. In the end, it did not matter that he didn't do any such thing. The atmospherics for the crucial Indo-Pak talks were already subtly altered by all the rumours. The last time Pakistanis saw a glimpse of 'Indian secularism' was when Rajiv Gandhi flew into Peshawar for the funeral of the frontier Gandhi, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. Rajiv offering prayers in the Muslim tradition is a sight few have forgotten in Pakistan.

Though a large number of Pakistanis do not attach any importance to Haider being a Muslim, there are many who feel he has betrayed his faith, specially when it comes to defending Indian policy on Kashmir. Others feel that Haider's faith is, in fact, a handicap rather than an asset as far as dealing with Pakistan is concerned. "It is a great disadvantage for Haider. Since he is a Muslim he has to prove himself more Indian than the Indians themselves. In India it is so unusual for a Muslim to be in such a senior position that the foreign secretary has to be more cautious than his Hindu counterparts," says Dr Shirin Mazari, editor of the English weekly Pulse.

At the talks itself, the usual "cautious optimism" was missing and the momentum, built up during the Male meet between prime ministers Nawaz Sharif and I.K. Gujral, had ebbed. Islamabad blamed New Delhi for trying to scuttle the talks by creating an atmosphere where it would try to negotiate from a position of strength. On the talks-eve, Islamabad watched in disbelief as an Indian aircraft violated Pakistani airspace. Quick on its heels, American ambassador in New Delhi Frank Wisner was quoted as saying that US satellites had photographs of the deployment of Prithvi missiles in Jalandhar, close to the Pakistani border Then, in firing across the border, a Pakistani major was killed.

"Frankly, it is the media which is creating the hype about these talks and not us," blurted a foreign office spokesman on the day Haider landed in Islamabad.

For once, no one was disagreeing. Even Sharif, the man who started it all, kept quiet. Earlier last week, during the budget debate, Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and several members of Sharif's Muslim League criticised his efforts to improve ties with India. Benazir mimicked Sharif's "I like this man (Gujral)" line, and ridiculed the helplessness of his government. "When the PPP government was in power, no Indian plane would have dared to violate our airspace. We might be a handful in this house but we know how to keep the country's flag flying high," she asserted. Surprisingly, there was not a murmur from the treasury benches.

Sharif has clearly been pushed into a corner, especially in Parliament. Jamaat-e-Islami chief Qazi Hussain Ahmed denied the fact that people had given Sharif the mandate to improve ties with New Delhi, referring to the prime minister's recent interview to an Indian television channel, EL TV. "The talks are a betrayal of the people of Kashmir. No government in Pakistan would hold talks with the Indians until they are ready to change their thinking on Kashmir. As for Haider, he is worse than a non-Muslim as he is lobbying the Indian cause against the Muslims of Kashmir," he told 바카라.

DOUBTS are being raised about Gujral too--is he a prime minister who is not really in charge, ask critics here. Two days before the Islamabad talks, the Indian army chief Gen. Shankar Roy Chowdhury accused Pakistan of deploying missiles close to the border while denying that India had done the same. After blaming Islamabad for destabilising the situation on the border, he declared that India had no plans to withdraw troops from the Siachen glacier. "I thought those were our lines," remarked a critic, an allusion to the Pakistani chief of army staff Gen. Jehangir Karamat's remarks on the eve of the first round of talks--that Siachen glacier would not be demilitarised.

This was not all. Another report spoke of India successfully test-firing the surface-to-air Akash missile for the Indian Air Force. Is there a split in the Indian politician and military hierarchy? "Nothing will come out of these talks as Pakistan is negotiating from a position of weakness and these talks cannot last for long," says Gen.(retd) Hamid Gul, former ISI chief. "Gujral cannot change the Indian Constitution which describes Kashmir as an integral part of India. And right now, the BJP is too powerful without which there can be no amendment. They are in fact on the warpath and want to undo Partition," he adds. Hamid Gul reflects a thinking in Pakistan that after 50 years and countless number of talks between the two sides nothing can really change on the ground.

"The Indians are rapidly building up their military strengths. It can be seen from their missile programme on which they are spending Ks 140 billion, which is equal to out entire defence budget. A bankrupt country like India has such ambitious programmes because it has short-term objectives," he points out. The general makes his preferences very clear when he says, "I like the BJP better than foreign secretaries like Haider who like Farooq Abdullah are frauds. The BJP speaks of Hindus as a community and does not hold the old Congress thinking. Haider has to prove that he is more loyal than the king himself".