Former Pakistan envoy Ajay Bisaria recalls Vajpayee’s ‘yeh aapne kya kiya’ to Musharraf

New Delhi [India], January 9 (ANI): Recalling the 2001 Agra Summit, Ambassador Ajay Bisaria said that the then Pakistan President Prevez Musharraf’s overreach in terms of publicly broadcasting hawkish positions on Kashmir–and his insistence on a formulation linking progress on all issues with progress on Kashmir–had led to the unravelling of the summit.

On the second day of the historic summit between India and Pakistan in July 2001, Musharraf had met with editors of major newspapers and TV networks for a breakfast conversation, in which he let loose his hawkish position on Kashmir and equated terrorists with freedom fighters, Bisaria recounted in ‘Anger Management: The Troubled Diplomatic Relationship Between India and Pakistan’.

The former Indian envoy to Pakistan said that he was then tasked with informing then Prime Minister Atal Atal Bihari Vajpayee who was in in conversation with Musharraf oblivious to everything happening outside the meeting room. Bisaria said he informed Vajpayee about Musharraf’s interview with newspapers and the footage of it being played on television.

Speaking with ANI, Bisaria recalled that after he left the room, Vajpayee had said in Hindi, “General Sahab ye aapne kya kiya.’ The former diplomat noted that the summit went downhill after that moment.

Bisaria also said the then Home Minister L K Advani was “quite aware of the slant in the media reporting, making him the villain of the piece.”

“The simplistic narrative emerging from the meetings, fuelled by Pakistani leaks, was that while Vajpayee and Jaswant Singh were for an understanding and OK with Pakistan’s convoluted draft of the Agra joint statement (linking progress in bilateral ties to forward movement on the Kashmir issue), Advani the hawk had vetoed it since he did not want any progress with Pakistan.”

Recalling the meeting and the events that took place before the meeting, Bisaria said, “So, if you remember the morning, that particular morning, it was an interview, a breakfast meeting that Musharraf did with about 35 editors and senior editors of newspapers and NDTV released that footage and it was playing out on television while the Prime Minister was sitting and talking to Musharraf and wasn’t aware of this. So Brajesh Mishra Principal Secretary to the PM, then he asked me to go in and inform the Prime Minister, so he jotted down some things and I had them typed up, I wrote a few things describing and basically saying that it’s playing out on television.”

“Musharraf has said such things about Kashmir, such things about terrorism and I went in and walked into the room. The two leaders stopped their conversation, looked at me and I told the Prime Minister there is something important. He looked at the paper and I walked out. After that, he looked at the paper and said ‘General Sahab ye aapne kya kiya’ and he said words to the effect that this had spoiled the atmospherics and because of that from that point onwards the summit went downhill,” he added.

Stressing that the Agra Summit was not a complete failure, Bisaria said that the two leaders were able to get a better understanding of each other during their meeting in Agra.

The diplomat also spoke about Vajpayee’s visit to Islamabad in 2004 when he signed a peace document that guaranteed that Pakistan would not use terror against India.

Explaining the bright side of the summit between Vajpayee and Musharraf, Bisaria said, “I make that argument that it was part of Vajpayee’s journey to Islamabad in 2004 when he signed an actual peace document, a document which guaranteed that Pakistan would not use terror against India. But to get to that space he needed to understand the mind of the dictator.”

“So it was a process that Agra helped in Vajpayee understanding Musharraf better and it possibly helped Musharraf understand India better. That he had a simplistic view that he would go and get a deal on Kashmir and come back that it wasn’t so simple. So I think Agra was a great tutorial for both the leaders to understand each other better,” Bisaria said.

He said that Musharraf’s overreach on Kashmir prevented an outcome of a good document after the Agra Summit. He emphasised that Musharraf wanted to link everything with Kashmir and not allow too much of a reference to terrorism in the drafts. He noted that the summit failed as the positions of India and Pakistan were different.

Asked about his different view regarding the Agra summit which some termed a failure, Bisaria stated, “I think the narrative part of it was promoted by Pakistan and by Musharraf himself in his book which said there were certain hawks in India and he named also Mr Advani who were preventing an outcome of a good document that was coming out of Agra. But the facts are different. The fact is that what was responsible was Musharraf overreach on Kashmir. He wanted to link every development in the document with movement on Kashmir.”

“He wanted to link progress on everything with Kashmir. He wanted didn’t allow too much of a reference to terrorism in the drafts that were being discussed and therefore the summit failed because there was too much of a gap between Pakistan’s position and India’s position. So Mr Advani and the entire CCS, the Cabinet Committee on Security members were present in Agra and all of them had a fairly consensual view on this, that this is not something we should allow. We should not let him get away with it, so that was the reason for the failure and not personalities.”

Asked about the title of his book, Bisaria termed it a “playful title” and added that anger has been an important motive in the ties between India and Pakistan over the last 75 years. He said that there is a lot of anger over partition, war and India’s anger over Pakistan’s perfidy.

“There has been anger over terrorism, so there is a lot of anger, real justified, unjustified, …. in the relationship and in terms of policy, there has been a lot of conversation around management that the argument is that you cannot resolve this issue peacefully and permanently but you can manage it in different ways and through diplomacy and through other means,” he said.

“So, I think the whole idea was to juxtapose these two ideas and call it anger management. So it shouldn’t be taken too literally by asking whose anger and whose anger is more whose anger is less,” Bisaria said.