New FM favours reviving Musharraf-Manmohan peace plan

[third eye]

A caretaker Govt attempting be an elected one ? In any case. since 370 is history, the Mush-MMS plan is not relevant any more

This appears to be an attempt by the deep state to " display' its desire for peace to the IMF etc through its " His Masters Voice'.

ISLAMABAD:
Pakistan’s new Foreign Minister, who was once expelled from India, is in favour of reviving the Musharraf-Manmohan peace plan in order to end hostilities between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.

Jalil Abbas Jilani on Friday returned to the Foreign office but this time as caretaker Foreign Minister. Jilani served as foreign secretary of Pakistan and Pakistan’s Ambassador to important capitals including the US and the EU.

Jilani was also the deputy high commissioner in New Delhi in 2003, when the Indian government declared him persona non grata after accusing him of funneling funds for separatist activities in Jammu and Kashmir.

Being the interim foreign policy chief, he may not have enough time and limited mandate to change the course of Pakistan’s foreign policy but he may lay ground for the future government particularly on how to proceed with India.

Sources close to Jilani told The Express Tribune that he is in favour of improving ties with India. The new Foreign Minister told The Express Tribune on Thursday that improvement in the relationship with India was contingent upon resolution of all outstanding issues including the longstanding issue of Jammu and Kashmir.

But his public position aside, sources said Jilani was of the view that Pakistan should explore options paving the way for resurrecting the peace process during Musharraf-Manmohan time.

The foreign minister believes that dialogue between the two countries between 2004 and 2007 could be revived provided both sides showed the political will and resolve.


That peace process was considered the most sustained efforts by the two countries to resolve their festering disputes including Jammu and Kashmir.

In fact extensive back channel talks at the time between the two countries led to the potential road map for the resolution of the Kashmir dispute.

Then Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri was on record as saying that both sides even shared non-papers on the Kashmir resolution.

The two countries were believed to be close to signing the Siachen and Sir Creek agreements. It was said the agreements were to be signed during the long pending visit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Pakistan in early 2007.

However, Gen Musharraf’s sudden move to remove Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry sparked a lawyers’ movement that eventually led to the ouster of the military ruler.

Sources said Jilani was in the foreign office and knew the ground both sides covered during that period. Hence, he was convinced that the best way forward for the two sides was to revive that process.

However, the chances of revival of the process appear slim in the foreseeable future because both sides are heading towards elections.

Nevertheless, there is a possibility that the caretaker government having the strong backing of the establishment may lay some groundwork for the future engagement with India.

Observers are skeptical if India would reciprocate given its hardline stance on Kashmir and changes it brought to the disputed region in August 2019.

Jilani ‘favours’ peace with India | The Express Tribune

Seeks revival of Musharraf-Manmohan peace plan

tribune.com.pk

 

[epebble]

"end hostilities"

What hostilities? They are at peace. Why not let sleeping dogs lie? I am sure he has more important things to take care of.

 

[hembo]

Understanding Pervez Musharraf Through His Four-Point Plan For Kashmir, The Himalayan Blunder India Almost Walked Into​

byVenu Gopal Narayanan-Tuesday, February 7, 2023 01:53 PM IST

Snapshot​

• The ‘Manmohan-Musharraf four-point formula' refers to a series of opaque negotiations between India and Pakistan, on equally opaque terms, which have never been formally disclosed by either government.

The notoriety Parvez Musharraf earned by starting the Kargil War will not go away with his death on 5 February at a hospital in Dubai.

This is primarily because of the barbaric, inhuman manner in which his troops mutilated the bodies of Indian soldiers. This went against the soldier’s code, and will never be forgotten, or forgiven.

Nonetheless, now that he is no more, it makes more sense to analyse him, and what he sought to achieve as leader of Pakistan, since some of the wheels he set in motion continue to rotate in India even today.

These moves also find echo in numerous tweets by prominent Indian politicians and ‘experts’, who eulogised Musharraf in condolence, for trying to secure a peace with India.

Such efforts at rank virtue-signalling are flagrantly distasteful, not least because they gloss over the serial attacks on India during Musharraf’s tenure. They are also factually incorrect, since, at no point till he gave up power in 2008, did Musharraf end the state sponsorship of terrorism against India.

And yet, the glowing, heartfelt condolences flow. Their common root is an audacious attempt by Musharraf between 2004 and 2007, to win a momentous concession on Jammu and Kashmir from prime minister Manmohan Singh, which would have been disastrous for India.

This is colloquially called the ‘Manmohan-Musharraf four-point formula’, and refers to a series of opaque negotiations between India and Pakistan, on equally opaque terms, which have never been formally disclosed by either government.

All we have is a brief reference in Musharraf’s 2006 book, ‘In the line of fire’.

Essentially, the four points Musharraf proposed to Manmohan Singh involved:

One, both countries granting political autonomy just short of independence to Kashmir (interestingly, he hints that Ladakh, Jammu and Gilgit-Baltistan might not make it to the final map of a reunified Kashmir). Though not specifically listed in the book, but by implication, non-provincial subjects, like citizenship, currency, tourism, water-sharing, or foreign trade, would be managed by a body which included Pakistani, Kashmiri, and Indian representatives.

Two, a demilitarisation of this autonomous Kashmir (Pakistan’s primary goal right from the 1948 war, following which, Nehru allowed the matter to go to the United Nations).

Three, the dissolution of the LoC, the Line of Control, which is the current boundary between India and Azad Kashmir. India does not recognise this as an international border.

And, four, again by inference alone, free trade, and the movement of people, between this reunited Kashmir, Pakistan and India.
In all four points, Musharraf focuses repeatedly on Srinagar, Kashmir and Kashmiris. The Hindus of Jammu, the Buddhists of Ladakh, or the Shias and Ismailis of Gilgit-Baltistan appear to be of little value to him.

So, by this plan, India would effectively give up one state of the union plus land access to Ladakh, Aksai Chin, and the Siachen Glacier.
Pakistan would be gifted a marvellous new land route to China, its ‘Iron Brother’.

Our forward positions in Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh would become isolated outposts imperilled from three sides. And our frontlines would be pushed south to the plains, to now lie on a line running broadly from Pathankot, through Chandigarh, to Haldwani.

The political and strategic losses of accepting such a proposal were incalculable. Yet, in spite of this, what is unbelievable is not that Musharraf would propose something like this, but, that the Congress government of Manmohan Singh actually decided to consider it.

Between 1999, when he unceremoniously booted out Nawaz Sharif in a coup d’état, and 2004, Musharraf’s overtures to India found little traction.

Prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee agreed to a few symbolic gestures, and even to a summit at Agra in 2001, which was doomed from the start, but he never seriously entertained any proposals which would have forced India to compromise on its national security or interests.

But the moment the Congress formed a coalition government in 2004, Musharraf knew that he was in with a chance, even if it was a long shot.

According to various reports, two senior Indian and Pakistani diplomats carried out a series of secret meetings from 2004 to 2007 in other countries, to see if they could arrive at some workable formula.

What’s most shocking about this push for peace is that the four-point proposal did not contain a single reference to the dismantling of Pakistan’s terror infrastructure.

It was as if that vital aspect would somehow magically vanish the day India unilaterally gave in to Musharraf’s outrageous demands.
Now, neither government has officially acknowledged these meetings, but word on the street at the time was, that these discussions were an exercise in futility, because they did not answer a very basic question asked by our military to the political leadership: bearing in mind the centrality of the Kashmir valley to India’s strategic planning, what was our ‘Plan B’ if we gave it up?

How on earth were our armed forces expected to tackle the threat posed by two large, inimical, nuclear-powered neighbours working in tandem, if we withdrew from the very regions which kept those threats at bay?

Obviously, there was no answer. So, the four points floated prettily in a delusional orbit of puppi-jhuppi and aman-ki-asha, to the immense delight of our doves, while Islamist terrorist attacks on civilians mounted across India.

In this period, there were at least a dozen major bombings and serial blasts in eight states, which killed hundreds of Indian citizens, and maimed many more.

The massive expansion of Islamist radicalisation in India, even as Indian diplomats were forced to follow Musharraf’s dreams, cannot be quantified.

And yet, even today, there are those of the Congress persuasion, who continue to believe that a modified version of Musharraf’s four-point formula is still the right route for India to achieve peace with Pakistan.

As Dr Happymon Jacob, associate professor of Diplomacy and Disarmament at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, writes in his 2020 monograph for an American think tank, while the four-point formula might not be an ideal basis for future talks to resolve the Kashmir problem, it remains the best available basis for India to engage with Pakistan.

One can’t even laugh at such dangerous beliefs, because the political, military, and strategic ramifications of their incorporation into our foreign policy thinking, even if only in part, are too horrendous to contemplate.

The irony is that Musharraf floated his four-point balloon knowing full well that it would never work.

Having shot his bolt at the Agra Summit of 2001, hemmed in by America’s war on terror in Afghanistan, and India’s aggressive military mobilisation following the terrorist attacks on our parliament complex in December 2001, the Lok Sabha election results of 2004 were a godsend which bought him some desperately needed breathing space.

His arrow in the dark hit its mark in the usual corners of India. Kargil was an audacious move, required by Musharraf to cement his power base, but everything else which followed, including simultaneously playing the Americans, the Indians, the Afghans, and Al Qaeda against the middle, was based on a recklessness born of desperation.

It is a wonder he survived at the top for so long.

Thus, the ghost of Musharraf lives on, not in Dubai where he died in exile, nor in the Pakistan his parents took him to as a child, but in certain academic and political circles of the Delhi of his birth.

May his soul find solace in that, even if India doesn’t.

 

[Paji]

The Musharraf Manmohan plan is dead. At that time, Pakistan was a frontline state in the war on terror and there was US pressure on India to normalise relations with Pakistan so that Pakistan could focus on fighting Al Qaeda and Taliban.

Since then, Pakistan has been used and thrown away by the US and today has a much weaker bargaining position. India has mostly been successful in isolating Pakistan diplomatically and painting it as a state that supports terrorism. India's economy has become also much stronger than pakistan's in the last 20 years. India has no incentive to make any concessions to Pakistan today. She will just wear Pakistan down by attrition until Pakistan capitulates.