Nawaz & Kargil

THE image of External Affairs minister Jaswant Singh refusing to shake hands with his Pakistani counterpart Sartaj Aziz in Delhi at the height of the Kargil conflict remains one of the defining memories of that war. Singh’s hostile body language reflected the intensity of the betrayal in India, especially after Lahore, and especially since the foreign minister had only a few days before the Pakistani visit made public the taped conversation between two Pakistani army generals: Pervez Musharraf and Mohammed Aziz. The tapes showed that Kargil was a deliberate exercise, planned and fine-tuned by the uniformed boys in Rawalpindi. But what about Nawaz Sharif’s role in this dirty story? Was he or wasn’t he involved in Kargil? At the time, Indian officials preferred an ambiguous silence, only indicating delicately that Nawaz ‘‘didn’t fully know’’ about the details of the operation.

Two years later, as India prepares to receive Musharraf on the day the Pakistani army began its formal withdrawal from Kargil in 1999, the past has begun to clear itself a little. It is now known that even as India was publicly fighting its war against Pakistan, it had secretly handed over the Musharraf-Aziz tapes to Nawaz Sharif. Moreover, both sides were even hatching a plan for Nawaz to visit Delhi and do a deal with Vajpayee. Nothing came of the latter, but clearly, the government believed that Musharraf, not Nawaz, was responsible for this dirty chapter in Indo-Pak relations.

No Jama Masjid

ONE of the reasons why the good General Musharraf was offered a visit to the Hazrat Nizamuddin dargah in new Delhi, was because the Indian side didn’t particularly want him to ask for a visit to Jama Masjid. The masjid is one of North India’s oldest living monuments and associated with the sentiments of the Muslim community in the region. The Indians feared that if Musharraf visited the masjid — a convenient stopover en route to or from the Neharwali gali — he might see himself and be seen as the leader of the Muslims in the sub-continent. In the ultra-sensitive symbolism that has come to be associated with the visit, that was definitely a no-no.

The shrine of the Sufi saint Hazrat Nizamuddin was much ‘‘safer’’, New Delhi felt, because of the liberal-mindedness associated with the Sufi sect in Islam. The same argument went for Ajmer Sharief, where Sufi pir Moinuddin Chisti is revered by both Hindus and Muslims.

Agra on his mind

LYING in bed in his hospital room in Mumbai, PM Vajpayee is said to have begun preparing himself for his summit meeting with General Musharraf. First came the Tashkent papers, when former Soviet leader Alexei Kosygin mediated talks between Lal Bahadur Shastri and Ayub Khan. Since, the PM is said to have read the Shimla files, when Indira Gandhi met Bhutto and the Indian side was so sure it would finally get an agreement out of a defeated Pakistan. Indeed, Bhutto told the then PM at Shimla — what has since become a well-known story — that Pakistan would agree to converting the Line of Control into an International Boundary (IB). Then Bhutto returned home to Islamabad, to renege upon his verbal promise to the Indian leader. Here’s an interesting story associated with Shimla. ‘‘What room would you like to sit in, Mr Bhutto?’’ Indian officials asked the Pakistani leader, offering him the choice of four rooms for his one-on-one talks with Mrs Gandhi. Of course, all the rooms had been bugged! Ever since, leaders in the subcontinent have learnt that its better to go for a stroll in the open air if they want to say things to each other they might want to deny in public.

Hotel madness

EVIDENTLY, the Jaypee hotel at Agra has a helipad, so the Mughal Sheraton’s also building one. Then there’s the story that the Indian delegation might be staying at the Jaypee, therefore the management is furiously straightening out its hotel corridors to allow smooth access for the pradhan mantri’s wheelchair. Meanwhile, security at the Amar Vilas hotel has become so strict that photographers are no longer allowed to shoot inside, leading to speculation that there is where the Pakistani delegation is going to stay for the summit.

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