Cricket diplomacy ushers in a new hope in the region

India and Pakistan successfully used "cricket diplomacy" to enable President General Musharraf to visit India to witness cricket between the two sides. The idea was that even if the outcome of the mini-summit would fail, it would not harm politically the leaders of the two countries because cricket game provided the edifice of the meeting of two leaders. Accordingly they went to the field and shook hands with the players of both sides with thousands cricket fans cheering the leaders.

Taking this opportunity of witnessing the game, President Musharraf met with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and had a mini-summit in an extraordinary atmosphere of cordiality. It meeting was choreographed well from diplomatic point of view.

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After the meeting, both the leaders have said that peace between the two nuclear rivals is "irreversible." Why is there such optimism between the two sides? President Musharraf summed it up in a breakfast meeting with India media editors on April 18 when he said quite simply: "The world has changed."

How has the world changed?
There have been seismic shift in the world environment during the four years. It is not cliche to say that after 9/11, the world has changed. It has changed the focus of American foreign policy and its preoccupation with war on terrorism has changed its relations with many countries. For example, Pakistan and the Central Asian republics were drawn to the embrace of the US after 9/11.

Another fact that has emerged is the rise of China as the potential global power, challenging the US. Both India and China are tipped to cause world power shift in the coming decades. India's rising economic power, coupled with China's growth will force a restructuring of balance of power in world affairs.

Pakistan has been aware that India's relations with the US and China have changed. Both countries want to lure India to their camp. The US wants India to act as counter-weight to China in the Asia Pacific region, while China wants India to move away from the embrace of the US and a subtle power game is being played in the Asia-Pacific region by the US and China. The US Secretary of State visited New Delhi last month and China's Prime Minister visited India. President Bush is scheduled to visit India later this year.

Another factor is the prevailing atmosphere of economic globa-lisation. During the Cold War, an absence of armed conflicts was considered a success. At the 21st century, there is a different definition of success. It is judged by interactions within regional economic blocs to enhance their economic gains by collective bargaining.

Shifting Indo-Pakistan position
In the light of the above scenario, both India and Pakistan have realized that the territorial dispute of Kashmir has been a key negative factor in not cooperating with each other. As a result, both the countries are lagging behind in economic development, even compared with that of in the countries of South-East Asia. Unless economic power is there, political leverage diminishes in international affairs. Both realize that Kashmir dispute will need to be resolved with imagination and innovation because past strategies would not work.

Pakistan seems to have reversed its earlier policy that if Kashmir dispute is not settled, nothing moves in other sectors. The pragmatic President Musharraf ditched the policy and has embraced that confidence-building measures must be adopted first to create an environment in which the Kashmir dispute would be amicably settled to their mutual satisfaction.

India, on the other hand, has also realized that making the Line of Control (LOC) as the permanent international border of two countries is not acceptable to Pakistan and India has prudently shifted its earlier stand that LOC has not been "set in stone but drawn on sand" as one Indian journalist put it. It appears that both sides are prepared to accept the reality of the opposing view. Former Indian Foreign Secretary M.K. Rasgotra reportedly said: "Both sides have shown flexibility and displayed pragmatism."

What have they agreed?
In the joint statement, the two sides agreed to:

* set up a joint business council to improve trade;

* launch a rail link between the Indian state of Rajasthan and Pakistani province of Sindh by January 2006;

* increase the frequency of bus service across divided Kashmir launched on April 7;

* allow trucks to use this route to promote trade;

* open a bus link between Poonch in Indian Kashmir and Rawalkot in Pakistani Kashmir;

* re-open consulates in Mumbai and Karachi by the end of the year; and

*begin a bus service between Amritsar in India and Lahore in Pakistan.

Both sides also pledged not to let militant attacks impede the peace process. For India this commitment from President Musharraf is very significant.

President Musharraf before his departure paid a courtesy call to former India's Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. It seems that the President recognized the peace initiative provided by Vajpayee in January 2004 and his contribution to peace efforts between the two countries. The 1999 Vajpayee-Sharif Lahore Declaration is considered as one of the pillars of peace.

Conclusion
Peace rapprochement between the two countries is good news for people of South Asia. It will hopefully generate the momentum in the region for other countries to cooperate in achieving the common goal of alleviation of poverty of millions of people in South Asia. With all the available resources of the region, South Asia should be an engine of economic growth. At present, half of the world's poor live in this region that constitutes only 21 per cent of the world's population living on 3 per cent of the surface area of the world.

It is interesting to note that while President Musharraf was born in India, Prime Minister Singh had his early childhood in Pakistan. Both leaders migrated from their birthplaces. Both know the catastrophic consequences of turmoil after independence in 1947 and both realize the implications of peace and war in the region.

Barrister Harun ur Rashid is a former Bangladesh Ambassador to the UN, Geneva.