Welcoming Singh’s statement

BY and large, India was a silent spectator of the electoral exercise in Pakistan. Not only had it conspicuously refrained from commenting on Pakistani elections, it had also put on hold the peace process and the various meetings between the officials of two countries in the past few months did not go beyond expression of bureaucratic curtsies. Here in Pakistan, too, the anti-Musharrafism had so tightly captured the centre stage during the run-up to the polls that it elbowed out almost all other subjects of national concern, including the relationship with India. Even the ever-green foreign policy issue of Kashmir did not figure in the speeches of the contestants beyond a few miserly words, as their parties’ election manifestoes relegated it to the last paragraphs. But now that government formation is underway in Pakistan, the Indian Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, has spoken, expressing the hope that the newly elected leadership would work with India putting behind the unhelpful past. “The newly-elected leaders in Pakistan can quickly move forward with us on this. We would welcome this and meet them half way”, Dr Singh told parliament. Interestingly, his statement has come fast on the heels of Asif Ali Zardari’s reported remark to an Indian news outlet the other day that ties with India cannot be held hostage to Kashmir, which attracted some criticism by the Kashmiri leaders. But it would be unfair to cast this episode in negative light, given that the PPP has clarified the context of Zardari’s remark and the Foreign Office spokesman too insisted that Kashmir remained the “core issue which is at the heart of conflict between Pakistan and India”. As to what Dr Manmohan Singh expects of the new Pakistani leadership, the choice of words in his speech in the parliament makes amply clear. According to him, “The most courageous steps to build peace were taken by prime ministers Nawaz Sharif and Atal Behari Vajpayee”. It was in February 1999, almost a year after Pakistan had succeeded in rectifying the power balance in South Asia by conducting tit-for-tat nuclear explosions, that Vajpayee travelled to Lahore on the inaugural run of Delhi-Lahore bus service and made a visit to the Minar-i-Pakistan as a token of India conceding the fact of existence of Pakistan as a separate homeland of South Asian Muslims.
But the warmth thus created dissipated rather soon enough when the armies of the two countries clashed at the Kargil heights a few weeks later. Once again, thanks to Washington’s persistence, Atal Behari Vajpayee welcomed the new Pakistani leader, General Pervez Musharraf, to the Agra summit that triggered a series of confidence-building measures (CBMs), mostly unilaterally announced by Pakistan to which Indian reaction was generally lukewarm. Prime Minister Singh has also touched upon a chord sweet to PPP leaders’ ears by noting that the assassinated prime ministers Rajiv Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto had set the ball rolling for a warm bilateral relationship by meeting soon after she took over power for the first time. Now Dr Manmohan Singh wants the two countries to have “close and co-operative” relations and a “framework for enduring peace”. The Indian leader’s statement is welcome, even when it tends to give the impression that he was encouraged to make an overture after seeing the “ray of hope” in the pronouncements of the newly elected leaders to develop close ties with India for durable peace. As the Foreign Office spokesman said, Pakistan looks forward to gearing up the pace of composite dialogue between the two countries, which provides a broader framework, which clearly recognises Kashmir dispute as the core issue. From the Pakistani public perspective, Kashmir remains the most crucial issue of the country’s foreign policy and a government, elected or non-elected, would ignore its importance at the peril of its own popularity. But a realisation has also begun to emerge that only by moving in tandem on other outstanding issues the two sides would be able to move closer on Kashmir.





Violence on the high seas

ANTIWHALING activists of the Sea Shepherd group hurled more than two dozen bottles containing a liquid and more than 100 envelopes containing a white powder onto the whaling factory ship Nisshin Maru off Antarctica on Monday. A crew member of the ship and two Japan Coast Guard officers suffered eye injuries from what is believed to have been butyric acid. The attack should be strongly condemned. As Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura said, the attack was an unpardonable act that causes unjust harm to Japanese ship crew members working legally on the high seas. The Nisshin Maru is engaged in scientific research whaling. It is clear that the environmentalist group used violence to protest whaling activities that are being carried out in accordance with procedures accepted by the International Whaling Commission. But it also must be questioned whether Japan is adequately responding to the popular view in foreign countries that whales are intelligent wild animals that cannot be killed humanely and should be protected. At the very least, the Fisheries Agency should try to clearly answer questions that may crop up.
Japan started research whaling in 1987, originally catching about 300 whales. The scope of the research has expanded so that the catch is now more than 1,200 whales. The catch for fiscal 2007 originally included 50 humpback whales. Since humpbacks are feared to be near extinction, the plan drew strong protest from abroad and Japan backed down from the plan. The agency needs to explain how decisions are made on the number and types of whales that must be killed. Under a relevant treaty, Japan is making use of whales killed for research, but some people suspect that research whaling is a disguised form of commercial whaling. There is not a large demand for whale meat and Japan’s stock of whale meat is increasing, reaching a maximum of 4,500 tons in 2007. To avoid suspicion and reduce antagonism, Japan should deepen dialogue with antiwhaling countries and people abroad, and consider changing its way of whaling if necessary.

—Japan Times