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The Rediff Interview/ Inder Kumar Gujral

'We cannot relax our vigil on borders'

The India-Pakistan relation is on a dangerous footing, warns former prime minister Inder Kumar Gujral.

The developments in Pakistan, he told Onkar Singh when they met for a one-to-one, cannot and should not be ignored. Army chief General Pervez Musharraf, who took over the reigns of that country in a bloodless coup, was responsible for the Kargil conflict and, hence, India needs to monitor the developments on a day-to-day basis.

"We should keep our antenna up," he said.

Excerpts from the discussion that had Gujral commenting on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Pakistan situation:

The United States Senate has rejected the signing of the CTBT. How do you read the developments on this front?

If you recall, the draft treaty has an anti-enforcement clause. This implies that the treaty can be enforced only when the nuclear countries and the threshold countries sign the treaty. Now a new situation has arisen where a major nuclear power has failed to ratify it. There is no prospect of the treaty getting approved by the American Senate till the new president takes over. Therefore, for now the entire process gets scuttled. It is not the fault of anyone else but the main proponent of the idea.

From India's point of view, after Pokhran II, we can say confidently that we do not need to conduct the kind of tests which are banned under the treaty. We would prefer some kind of understanding on the use of nuclear weapons because these weapons are a threat to humanity. That has been our thinking for a long time.

When I was dealing with the CTBT negotiations, I told the major powers that neither is the treaty comprehensive nor does it ban all types of tests. It seeks to ban only a particular type of test which nuclear countries need not carry out. Since India has already acquired nuclear capability, we too do not need to carry out blasts to test our capability. We can go along with it. But we want a few things. We want to have the mechanism of monitoring and inspection to be settled to our own satisfaction.

Does the rejection mean easing of pressure on India as far as singing the CTBT is concerned?

I am not dealing with the pressures but with the desirability of signing the CTBT. I don't think that we can go ahead and sign it when the power [America] itself does not approve of the treaty. It cannot be enforced. The treaty by itself is self-defeating.

When negotiations were going on we had suggested that we should come to an agreement that all those who have signed the treaty should enforce it. And leave out those who do not want to sign it. We in India had said that we would not sign but we would not come in the way of its enforcement for those countries who signed it. It was China who suggested the inclusion of the threshold states and, hence, the anti-enforcement clause was added to the draft treaty. Now it is boomeranging on those states who were its authors.

Would you agree that the rejection is egg on America's face?

It is the internal politics of America. I am not going to comment on that. But I can tell you that the very fact that the American Senate has refused to ratify the treaty shows the limitation of the treaty. In my discussions with American President Bill Clinton, I had told him that this was a self-deceptive treaty. I feel nothing is going to happen in the near future on this front.

How do you read the situation in Pakistan?

It is unfortunate that the democratically elected government has been dismissed in an undemocratic fashion. I would say that it is the misfortune of the Pakistani people that every time they start doing well with a democratic government, the government is dismissed undemocratically. It is sad to note that there has not been even a single occasion in its 52-year-old history when a government has been changed through ballot. They have all been thrown out. So it is not surprising that the army has once again taken over the reigns of the country.

In one of your statements you said that we should not mistake Musharraf for General Zia-ul-Haq, he is a dangerous man?

No, I did not use the word 'dangerous'. What I said was that the entire history sheet of General Musharraf is that of a confrontationist. He is the author of the Kargil crisis. In fact he and his number two, General Aziz, who did all the nitty-gritty of the coup when Musharraf himself was in Sri Lanka, had planned the Kargil misadventure. You would recall that when Musharraf was in China, Aziz kept him abreast the developments in Kargil. Their conversation was printed in the Indian media, courtesy the Indian intelligence agencies who had taped the conversation. Both of them played a major role in the Talibanisation of Afghanistan. So we must keep his history in mind when we look at the new regime in Pakistan.

Are you trying to say that [then prime minister Nawaz] Sharief was not aware of the Kargil developments?

I would not say that. He may have been aware of what would happen but he was not aware of the details of the Kargil operations. Possibly he was given only that much briefing which did not make him understand the real implications of the operations. My own assessment is that Sharief is not a man of details who understands the implications.

Why is that the people of Pakistan have not reacted [against the coup]?

They may have been afraid of the army. In any case, in most of the coups that took place in Pakistan there have never been reaction by the people during the initial stages. In the present case Sharief gave the chance to the army by moving away from the popularity which he enjoyed when he became prime minister. This plank was no more there with him and it becomes clear from the demonstrations in the streets after the coup.

Hasn't the process of normalisation of relation with India come to a standstill?

When one of the central characters in the process of normalisation is missing, it is bound to affect the entire process. We have to first watch developments in Pakistan before we can talk in terms of holding some kind of negotiations with them. We should not down our antennas. We should not relax our vigil on borders.

Do you foresee another Kargil?

You cannot say anything at the moment. But, as I said, we cannot afford to relax our vigil.

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