But it is quite evident now that all the four vital As have combined to create a climate where more Pakistanis see the sense in arriving at a resolution with India.

Surely, nobody is willing to give away Kashmir, but nostalgia for getting the Valley through military, political or diplomatic means is now being replaced by a new realism. The Pakistani mind has evolved a great deal over the past months. The change is quite visible in the army.

Late last month, in fact a couple of days before Nawaz Sharif gave the interview, his army chief Parvez Musharraf accompanied him on a visit to the Pakistani side of Siachen. Usually, these visits are opportunities for grandstanding. But see, what the general said there, in his prime minister's presence.

``The possibility of another war (with India),'' he said, was now``zero per cent.'' He added, however, that it did not mean that threats to Pakistan had vanished. The threats, he said were internal, including on the economic front, and that the (Pakistan) army had to be conscious of it.

When was the last time a Pakistani army chief spoke like that? That too at Siachen?

Several Pakistani newspapers, editorial writers as well as analysts were quick to take note of that statement. Here was evidence that the army's worldview was changing. It was also seen to gel with Nawaz's conscious move to involve the army increasingly in the most problematic area of the economy (running of WAPDA, Water and Power Development Authority) and possibly, soon, the railways. Even politically, though he has been undone for the moment by his judiciary, he has been hoping military courts would try not just suspected terrorists in Karachi but also power and tax thieves around the country.

In the past, this would have been seen as the first stirrings of an interventionist mind in the GHQ. It canbe dangerous even now. But Nawaz believes that this is fundamentally a different army, and will submit to civilian authority. The chief has been handpicked by him. He does not, at the moment, have any hostile corps commanders. But there are other reasons behind his confidence.

In his last innings as prime minister, he chafed at his lack of control over the army. The President, as the presiding deity of the old military-bureaucratic Establishment, was the most powerful figure in the reigning troika.

Senior Pakistani officials and politicians recall how bitter Nawaz was when, during the Gulf War, while his government backed the US-led alliance, his army chief Mirza Aslam Beg had publicly taken an absolutely contrary view, virtually calling for an Islamic alliance against the US. The Islamabad grapevine has it that when Nawaz went to the President to complain, he just shrugged and told him to cool it. That is why, last year, when General Jahangir Karamat made a statement questioning his authority, he calledhim in, told him retractions and denials wouldn't do. The only way to make amends was for the general to go home.

The significance of this turning point is often not appreciated in India and also among the Pakistani liberals who, traditionally, happen to be not merely sympathetic to Benazir's Pakistan People's Party. Nawaz, for them, is a legatee of Zia. They give him very little credit for having strengthened the democratic system by removing the Eighth Amendment. In a conversation with me a day after his dismissal in 1993, Nawaz had complained, ``What kind of a system is this, aadha teetar, aadha bater (half a partridge, half a quail)?'' Sure enough, he has rectified that a bit, though, it would seem, with help from the second A, America.

The Lahore liberals who hate Nawaz's guts -- he hasn't particularly redeemed himself by attacking the judiciary and the media -- rightly say that he has succeeded in weakening the old Establishment in that today the Americans won't endorse a military coup of anysort. Washington's influence over the army is well known. It comes from old professional contacts, from a long and deep nurturing of a friendly constituency within the brass and from the belief in Rawalpindi that resumption of US arms sales is vital for Pakistan's security.

The Americans, who never really loved Nawaz, have good reason to think differently now. First of all, with the Taliban misadventure recoiling on them, the post-Cold War realities have come into play fully in the Subcontinent. Second, in no way does it suit them to encourage a regime that would revive hostility with India. Third, they worry a great deal about Pakistan's internal instability, the fragility of its economy, rising sectarian killings and regional alienation. They value Pakistan as a relatively stable, modern and democratic eastern flank of the Islamic world. They will not take any risks there.

Nawaz's father, or Abbaji, is a larger than life phenomenon that goes beyond the persona of the devout old patriarch. Abbaji is alsoshort-hand for key family members, including brother and Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, friends and courtiers such as his finance minister and chairman of the accountability commission. Together, they form a kind of kitchen cabinet which is powerful enough today to override the bureaucracy and the Establishment in many ways. Whether it can now ride roughshod even over the foreign policy establishment is the key question. This is where Nawaz will be hoping for some divine help, that the most vital A would come into play -- in his favour.

Tomorrow: Shuttle-bus diplomacy: Roadblocks the two PMs could run into