(Video)
Q&A session with Musharraf :
PakVideos - Pervez Musharraf: Taking on India on their Turf
Full Speech:
Bismillah Rehman Ur Rahim.
Aroon Puri Sahab, excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen. It is indeed my proud privilege to be speaking to such an august gathering. I would like to express my gratitude first of all to Aroon Purie sahab for having invited me and then giving me this opportunity to speak frankly to this august gathering. I would also like to express my gratitude to all of you for being here together and for honouring me. I would also like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the officials of Government of India for all the care that they have taken and they are taking for my security and protocol. Thank you very much ladies & gentlemen.
The subject that I have been given to speak is indeed the challenge of change. I am presuming, obviously, that the challenge of change in the context of Indo-Pakistan relations and not the world. So therefore, I presume ki yeh ek apas ki baat hain, apas ki baat karni hai and we have to be very frank and forthright in this apas ki baat. The subject indeed is most apt. It is apt because it rally depicts what is happening in the world, in our region and also may I say in our respective countries and there is an urgent requirement of a change. But when we say change, I take it implies breaking the status-quo, burying the past, moving forward positively. That, to be exact, is the essence of my speech or my lecture today.
Ladies & gentlemen, I stand for peace. Peace between Indian and Pakistan, whether you believe it or not, irrespective of all the cover, what you have said on the cover. And I mean every word of it again whether you believe it or not. I stand for peace, for the sake of the whole world, which today considers our region as a nuclear flashpoint. I stand for peace for the sake of our region, the South Asian region, where progress and development is tied to harmony between India and Pakistan. I stand for peace for the sake of the people of our two countries. The down-trodden, toiling masses of India and Pakistan and I stand for peace for the sake of our future generation to whom we owe a better life and a better environment.
Yes, indeed Mr. Aroon Purie, I was being advised against coming, even by my daughter – because of her concern for me nothing else. Because of her concern for me against the extremist reactions, negative reactions by the extremists on both sides, in India and Pakistan. But I decided to come. I decided to come to prove a point that the extremist must not have their way. We the moderates must guide events. We the moderates must stand for resolution of all issues, of all disputes, between us for everlasting peace and we must not allow the extremist to create obstacles in the way of that peace of that direction towards peace. I know that the people of Pakistan desire peace, I know it for sure and I would like to tell all of you that, that is the reality. But they would like to have peace with honour and dignity, not a peace through coercion – a peace with sovereign equality.
Ladies & gentlemen, my credentials as a man for peace, you must differentiate a man of peace from a man for peace. I can’t be a man of peace because I have been solider. So I am a man of war but I am a man for peace and my credentials are proven by all my actions, the action that I have been taking in all the years that I have been at the helm of affairs. It was I who started/initiated the thawing of the relations between India and Pakistan. When I rang up Prime Minister Vajpayee after your most unfortunate earthquake in the year 2000 in Gujarat and I offered support from Pakistan. It was again Prime Minister Vajpayee and myself, I who finalized the draft joint declaration after the Agra Summit in July 2001 which would have formed the basis for durable peace.
The drafting of this declaration was indeed done at the highest level, by me myself, Foreign Minister of Pakistan Mr. Abdus Sattar, Prime Minister Vajpayee and your Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh sahab. We did the drafting. It is just unfortunate that some force behind the scene sabotaged this attempt twice where we could not finally reach an agreement on this joint declaration. Subsequently, we again went into the cold situation of the past, till a very unfortunate occurrence of the attack on your Parliament in December 2001 and what followed was very furious indeed. Firstly you went for a troop build-up, all the Indian forces moved on our border, including the forces on the Eastern command and we reciprocated of course. So there was a force stand of for almost one long year between us with the forces eye-ball to eye-ball contact.
Another thing that happened and I saw was that all along this one year there was a war hysteria that was whipped up in the public in India and if I may be allowed to say, by whom. By your political leadership and also the media. If I was to take a dig at India Today, maybe your magazine or your India Today also, that was the situation here. On our side, I tried my utmost to cool tempers. And you can read any of my statements or whatever I did, my actions. If you remember, my role was positive throughout. In January, just one and half months after this and during this stand of I decided to go for a handshake with Prime Minister Vajpayee at Katmandu during the SAARC summit in January 2002, to defuse the situation. And throughout this one year I was insisting on de-escalation, reduction of tension, I was asking for dialogue.
Ultimately, ladies and gentlemen war was averted. Thank God! These peace overtures finally led to the SAARC Summit in Islamabad in January 2004 and it resulted in the Islamabad resolution which stipulated resumption of dialogue and initiating confidence building measures for resolving all our disputes. That was very good. But Ladies and Gentlemen we lost two and a half years since the Agra summit in July 2001. So we restarted the same process. We also started the back-channel diplomacy. And then in India there was a change of Government – BJP lost and the Congress took over the reins of the Government. The good thing was despite this change the peace process did not get derailed, it continued and we came for the Delhi summit between myself and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. That was in April 2005. And after this Delhi summit we issued a joint statement which stipulated very importantly, the peace process being irreversible and that purposeful dialogue on Kashmir to be initiated for its final settlement. That was all very good. But again Ladies & Gentlemen, we lost another one and half years. So if you see from the Agra Summit in July 2001 and now it was April 2005, we lost four years. And again we were at the same point, good intentions of moving forward towards peace.
If you allow, I would like to digress a little and give you a very interesting episode during this Delhi Summit where myself and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh went to see the one-day cricket match between India and Pakistan. And there we were batting and Afridi, our great hitter whenever he is in form, was informed so he was hitting every ball for a six or a four to the boundary and the ball used to come near our enclosure every time. It was very embarrassing and whenever he hit, I would start looking left and right so that I avoid looking at, I don’t know what he is doing over there. And the match continued and then we left and went for the official meeting and at the meeting, I told Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, I said Mr. Prime Minister I suggest although we are not scheduled to go for the closing ceremony, let us go for the closing ceremony also and let us do the prize distribution. He did talk about security problems, but then he very graciously agreed that we would go and I said very good and we started our discussion. But during the meeting my MS, my Military Secretary always had instructions whenever there is match or some kind of interesting thing going on, keep me informed even during important discussions, so every time he would enter with a chit. Maybe Prime Minister Manmohan Singh thought that he is giving me some important discussion point, actually he was giving me the cricket score. And I used to look at the chit and in that chit every time India loses two wickets, they are two down, the next chit comes after another half-an-hour, forty-five minutes, they have lost another one or two wickets.
Finally, when they had lost eight wickets I told Prime Minister Mr. Manmohan Singh, I said Mr. Prime Minister it appears that your team is sabotaging our attempts to go for the ceremony and that is exactly what happened when the team was all out before we could go. However, please don’t take it that I am thinking that Pakistan team is great. I think your team is a great team and they are playing much better than ours these days. And Afreedi is not at all in form like he was at that time.
So, coming back to the subject, Ladies & Gentlemen, we also took a lot of other bold steps. I declared a unilateral ceasefire on the Line of Control, a unilateral ceasefire which was reciprocated by India, by you and it is still holding out. We have save so many lives and so much loss of property. The idea of the Srinagar Muzafarabad Bus Service and also opening of maybe five more routes for travel across the Line of Control and a transit trade relationship came from our side. And also may I say after the devastating earthquake in Kashmir on both sides and our frontier province in 2005, I even said that we need to open the line of control totally for relief operation on both sides.
Ladies and Gentlemen, may I very honestly and sincerely say that I was not doing all this for any showmanship or for any point scoring. I was doing all this with a very sincere understanding and a very sincere conviction that the path of peace is the right course to be adopted for Pakistan and for India and for this whole region and for the whole world.
Ladies and Gentlemen we have done enough damage to each other over all these years since our coming into being. We have fought three wars. We fought a number of mini wars and we have had a cold war throughout since 1947. I strongly believe that we should try for peace now with equal zeal as we tried confronting each other. The twenty-first century is a century of geo-economics they say and they also say that the nineteenth century belonged to Europe, the twentieth century belonged to the United States and they say that the twenty-first century belongs to Asia. The question that comes to my mind is are we the South Asians poised to be a part of this Asian century of progress and development. The answer that I gave to myself is no. We are not, I am afraid we are not. While South-east Asia, East Asia, North-east Asia, China, Australia they are all cooperating for economic development, South Asia, Central Asia, this region is out of the loop. It is out of the loop because the only reason out of the loop because of Indo-Pakistan acrimony and hostility. The three most serious challenges common to both India and Pakistan that we have to face together and separately in our respective countries are:-
(i) The curse of terrorism and extremism
(ii) Poverty and underdevelopment; and
(iii) Hostility between our two countries.
These are the three issues I think which we have to address and resolve to move forward, together as I said and separately in our respective countries. Our social indicators, maybe, are the worst in the world. Maybe we are the most illiterate, most backward and the poorest. There are hundreds of millions of people who live below the poverty line. The situation indeed demands, bold and affirmative action. We must overcome the burden of history. That is what I feel to move forward. We must look at the present realities and we must work for the future. We have to cooperate to rise together and I have always said for the sake of the people, for the sake of toiling masses of our two countries, we can draw a lesson from Europe. Europe was at each other’s throats. They were warring for centuries, even outside their boundaries in other parts of the world, in South America, in Africa and in Asia they were warring with each other. But then they realized the dividends of peace and may I say they decided to put aside the burden of history and therefore, now we see the European Union, their common currency the Euro and their cooperation for progress and development. I think we need to learn a lesson from them. We must also see the dividends of peace that will accrue.
On the issue of trade, I think at the bilateral level there will be manifold increase in trade. I am sure we all will agree. In the few years of reproachma when during my tenure at the helm of affairs in Pakistan were our relations indeed irrespective of the covers, was the best ever between India and Pakistan, the relation between India and Pakistan I think in those years. During those years, the trade, the importable items to Pakistan, I know increased from two hundred to one thousand four hundred. That benefitted both sides Pakistan as well as India. So, therefore, I know bilaterally the trade will increase manifold to our mutual advantage. Intra-regionally, there will be interaction as far as Pakistan is concerned, maybe we have a road access to Nepal and Bangladesh. As far as India is concerned, you will have a road access to Afghanistan. Inter-regionally the South Asia and India in particular, could interact with Central Asia, could interact with the Gulf, could interact with Iran and IPI pipeline is the case in point. So cert
