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Pak parties say Musharraf
was bound to fail

K J M Varma in Islamabad

Pakistan's mainstream political parties have said the failure of the Indo-Pak summit at Agra could spell disaster for the region and asserted that only a democratically elected government in Pakistan would have the mandate to negotiate on Kashmir.

Reacting to the news from Agra that the two sides failed to sign a joint declaration, senior vice-president of the Pakistan Muslim League, Sayed Zafarul Ali Shah, said: "The breakdown of the talks could spell disaster for the region and lead to another confrontation (between India and Pakistan)."

Shah told PTI that the Pakistani side lacked political vision. Despite eight hours of one-to-one discussions between President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the two sides could not agree upon the text of a joint declaration, he said.

Shah said the breakdown of talks in Agra was a big setback for the peace process set in motion by the Lahore Accord.

The Pakistan Peoples Party, led by former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, said the lesson from Agra is clear: it is only a democratically elected government, backed by the mandate of the people, which gives the confidence to a leader to negotiate from a position of strength.

In a statement released in Islamabad, the party said: "As was expected, General Pervez Musharraf has failed and has returned home empty handed. He could not convince Prime Minister Vajpayee of the centrality of the Kashmir dispute."

A major reason for General Musharraf's failure is that he lacks public backing. The fear of a strong backlash in Pakistan because of the unrepresentative character of the government lurked in his mind, the statement added.

"This failure of an unrepresentative government is in sharp contrast with the successes achieved by democratic governments in talks with Indian leaders, be it the 1972 Simla agreement between late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Indira Gandhi or between Benazir Bhutto and Rajiv Gandhi in 1989," the statement said.

The president of the 19-party Alliance for Restoration of Democracy, Nawabzada Nasurllah Khan, said Pakistan's chances of negotiating a better deal over Kashmir would have brightened had it returned to democracy.

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, led by cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan, said the outcome of the Agra Summit shows that the Indian leadership has missed yet another opportunity to break from the past on the critical issue of Kashmir that bedevils bilateral relationships between the two countries.

The party said the Indian leadership's failure to agree to a framework, including a time frame for the resolution of the Kashmir dispute, has dampened hopes, raised sky high by the media hype.

PTI

Indo-Pak Summit 2001: The Complete Coverage

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