What the PML-N chief told a visiting Indian delegation of businessmen would have been unexceptionable, had he been speaking to businessmen from a country which accepted equality between states and which made sure that bilateral issues were not swept aside before thinking of better relations. However, Mian Nawaz, on whom the delegation called at his Raiwind residence on Sunday, did not take the opportunity offered of conveying India’s intransigence as an obstacle to peace, and the need to solve the bilateral issues as a precursor to normalisation of relations. Indeed, instead of resolving existing disputes, most notably the core issue of Kashmir, India has been creating fresh disputes, the latest being its illegal theft of Pakistan’s share of the Indus waters.
Mian Nawaz does not seem to have learnt how cunning a negotiator India has been, in his engagement with it, as Prime Minister, that included the Lahore Accord and the beginning of the composite dialogue process, or else he would not have dwelt so much on the prospects for normalisation that trade held, or how it would improve the lot of the people. This is where India would like Pakistan to be, a country which focuses solely on trade and improvement in the life of Indians. The recent grant of Most Favoured Nation status to India is symptomatic. It would like Pakistan to serve only its national interests, while disregarding its own, and sending across delegations like the one Mian Nawaz so generously received, is part of that strategy.
Instead of joining in the conspiracy of silence Indians want about Kashmir, as it pursues its own national interests at the expense of its neighbours, Pakistan and its leaders must lose no opportunity of putting forward the only viable solution to Kashmir by holding a UN-supervised plebiscite to allow the Kashmiris to exercise their right of self-determination. If that had been done, India and Pakistan could proceed to many mutually beneficial projects; if not, all efforts at making peace will be fruitless. Mian Nawaz should not jump aboard the wagon of those in Pakistan who want peace at any cost. The wishes of a small minority here must not allow India to fulfill its wish to continue its illegal and brutal occupation, and at the same time get whatever it wants from around the region. Pakistan must make it clear to its Indian interlocutors that unless the Kashmir issue is resolved in a mutually acceptable way, it must not entertain any hope of pushing its agenda in Pakistan.