President Zia-ul-Haq’s decision to make a brief stopover in Delhi on his way to Malaysia on November 1 is, as the spokesman of the external affairs ministry has aptly put it, a sign of a “high degree of normalcy” in Indo-Pakistan relations. The atmospherics, to use a popular American expression between the two countries, have certainly improved in recent months. Both governments have taken care to see to it that they do not tread on each other’s toes. Thus while President Zia has not sought of create an atmosphere of uncertainty in Jammu and Kashmir in the wake of Sheikh Abdullah’s death, Mrs. Gandhi has greatly softened her criticism of the US arms supplies to Pakistan. Indeed, in a recent interview to a Pakistani journal, she has gone so far as to say that India does not fear aggression from Pakistan and that Islamabad should feel equally reassured regarding New Delhi’s intentions. The Indian government has also let it be known that it is not negotiating a new arms deal with the Soviet Union and that the subject did not come up for discussion during Mrs Gandhi’s recent visit to Moscow. Simultaneously, there has been some improvement in Sino-India relations and the Soviet Union and China have resumed talks and thereby perhaps initiated a process which could in course of time lead to reconciliation between the two communist giants. These two developments can also help promote better relations between India and Pakistan.
But while the current efforts to maintain a civilized dialogue should continue, it will be wrong to pretend that basic issues between the two countries are likely to be resolved in the near future. Pakistan’s foreign policy perspective and objectives are not at all clear to us in India. We do not know what kind of understanding it has reached with the United States, Saudi Arabia and China, and whether, and how far it proposes, or is in a position, to honour these commitments. We are similarly in the dark about the nature of its contacts with the Soviet Union, the level of its support to the Afghan guerillas and its plans to cope with the refugee problem. We are totally dependent on US sources for our information on Pakistan’s efforts to acquire a nuclear weapons capability and China’s role in it. All in all, we are dealing with an entity we do not quite understand. There is, of course, no dearth of instant experts who sincerely believe, after a brief visit, that they know all that they need to know about the difficult and complex neighbor. But no government in its senses can allow itself to be guided by such tourists-turned-experts. Nor can a brief discussion between President Zia and Mrs. Gandhi be expected to throw much light on his motivations, compulsions and calculations. India is an open society and follows a fairly straightforward foreign policy. The opposite is true to Pakistan.