Shimla and AJK.

VERY many in India have nursed reservations about the 'Agreement on Bilateral Relations Between the Government of India and the Government of Pakistan' signed at Shimla on July 2, 1972, by the prime minister of India, Indira Gandhi, and the president of Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. The Indian delegation was badly split. Mohammad Yunus, the family retainer, was furious with his friend P.N. Haksar who had negotiated the agreement. So was Mrs Gandhi's principal secretary P.N. Dhar.

Little did they know that India's prime minister was better aware of the play of politics than any of them. There was an unseen party at Shimla - the Soviet Union. Bhutto's visit to Moscow earlier helped him. The Soviet Union, which had helped India a lot in 1971, was keen on a settlement between India and Pakistan and its re-emergence now, post-Tashkent, as a quiet mediator.

The agreement suited both sides admirably. It was the product of an understanding between the two leaders at the pinnacle of power. The diplomats did what they were told. On Pakistan's side was the doughty Aziz Ahmed. Sadly, the last survivor of the parleys at Shimla, Abdul Sattar, breathed his last recently. This accomplished diplomat rose to be Pakistan's foreign minister in which capacity he performed brilliantly at the summit at Agra in July 2001 between then president Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee whose colleague L.K. Advani ensured that Vajpayee did not win the spurs and the summit failed.

The wisest course is for both sides to resolve the dispute in earnest.

This writer would like to pay a tribute to Sattar Sahib, a valued friend of nearly 40 years.

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The Shimla pact has roughly three parts. One was to mop up the debris left by the war of 1971. The second was to ensure that the new Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir was respected by both sides. The third, in para six, envisaged that their countries' 'respective heads will meet again at a mutually convenient time in the future'. The remit was precisely defined: 'a final settlement of Jammu and Kashmir'.

This implied that a dispute existed which awaited 'a final settlement'. India's hawks baulked at this, holding that a Pakistan weakened by war should have been coerced to accept the LoC as a final border. Bhutto would have rejected this and the Soviet Union would have been furious at the failure.

However, as Pakistan's foreign minister Sahabzada Yaqub Khan admitted in the National...