The Price of Journalism

Najam Sethi was playing with fire. He knew that. His is a classic case of Intelligent v Ignorant. Is it too difficult to guess what the Ignorant will turn to when he is losing so humiliatingly? Physical violence, of course. The Ignorant knows no other recourse.

I hope to God that Najam Sethi is not killed on false charges. Not that it will not be tried. Najam Sethi is one of the very few bright lights that has illuminated the way in Pakistan. If he is silenced, Pakistan`s future will be darker than ever.

I want Najam Sethi to run Pakistan.

Najam Sethi will be released in a few weeks.
Chastened or Shaheed! Decency will be victimised yet again.

How can we be associated with this Pakistan? Is there a limit to this terrocracy (terrorism+democracy)? Is there God? Is there sanity? Is there regard? Why am I not surprised? Will Pervez Hoodbhai be next? Maleeha Lodhi? Asma Jahangir? Shandana? You? Me? Edhi?

I hate to say this, but it seems that people who still believe that Pakistan is a democracy need to wake and take a stock of their situation before it is too late.

I have said it before and I will say again; Nawaz Sharif`s government is a dictatorship and it is determined to stifle democracy in Pakistan at all costs to preserve and propagate its own power!

I would add a post-script to the above, but I am too disgusted and revolted at the situation in Pakistan to say anything!

Pakistanis wake up!!!
It is back to the dark days of the Zia Regime.
CHOWK is one of the last ``Free`` Forums left.
Najam Sethi, Haqqani, Afridi and Benazir.
The shoring up of the mediocrity from Raiwind
by silencing the Judiciary, the Presidency and
moderation in the Military needs our attention.

Ras

This is another example of state sponsored terrorism against the journalists. We are still

living in martial law regime. Lately I have realized that opposition appears to have cold shoulder now a days or they went under ground.

This government is pushing the country towards anarchry, record levels of corruption and dictatorship.

..YZ

Forwarded by Beena Sarwar


Pressures on the Pakistani press by Beena Sarwar

LAHORE: On May 3, the official Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) creeded a lengthy report titled ‘British media’s anti-Pakistan drive’. The news agency’s story, carried in full by various newspapers, eulogised Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s ‘bold decisions’ to put the country’s economy on track and refuted reports on stories of corruption in Pakistan by British newspapers under subheads like: ‘The Observer Story’, ‘The Independent Story’, and ‘The (Sunday) Times Story’.

The report concluded with ‘The Benazir Connection’, stating that Benazir Bhutto’s ‘’wild accusations against economic and foreign policy agenda (sic) of Nawaz Sharif have provided another excuse to the British media to pile up all kinds of abuses against Pakistan and its leadership… To make Benazir’s predictions (about the downfall of Sharif) come true, BBC has joined the band.’’

The attempt to discredit the British media by an official news agency was an indication of what was to follow. Since then, journalists have been detained, harassed, and threatened for having granted interviews to a BBC television crew, in Pakistan to produce a program for their ‘Correspondent’ series on high-level corruption in Pakistan`s government.

The team had been given permission by the government itself for the filming, and has also interviewed various senior political leaders, both from the government and the opposition.

On May 2 Mehmood Ahmed Khan (M.A.K.) Lodhi, who heads the investigations bureau of the Lahore edition of the English-language daily The News was picked up by the Intelligence Bureau (IB), and harassed and interrogated for two days about his involvement with the BBC team. He was released on May 4, following the intervention of Punjab Law Minister Raja Basharat. Basharat, after journalists covering the Punjab Assembly boycotted the May 4 session in protest.

‘’All I did was to guide the BBC people to some contacts for their programmes,’’ says a bemused Lodhi, adding, ‘’Even if I had actually worked with the team or granted them an interview, which I didn’t, that would have been well within my rights.’’

A columnist who did grant an interview was Hussain Haqqani, also an opposition leader. On the night of May 4, he was offloaded from a flight to Dubai and told that his name was on the exit control list. ‘’I was not given copy of the official orders, nor could the lowly officials at the airport explain the reasons for this extraordinary decision,’’ he wrote in his column for popular Lahore-based weekly The Friday Times (May 7-13).

Writing that the decision to offload him came ‘’at the heels of the government being visibly incensed’’ at the yet-to-be-aired BBC documentary, he said: ‘’If the BBC can be thus vilified, I am sure there will be much to malign me with. The British journalists will, however return home… I, on the other hand, will remain within the government’s reach. I am on the exit control list today. I wonder what other lists I will be placed on tomorrow.’’

Prophetic words. The next day, just after sending in his column, he was picked up in Rawalpindi city along with his brother Hassan Haqqani, a colonel in Pakistan`s army, by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).

Col. Haqqani was taken in a separate car, and released the same day after his captors realized he was an army officer. He is believed to have been tortured and interrogated for several hours before being released. Hussain Haqqani is still incommunicado.

The New York based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has sent a strongly worded fax regarding pressures on Pakistani journalists to Nawaz Sharif. It says that senior government officials have privately confided to several of CPJ`s sources that Haqqani was detained for questioning related to his interviews with a BBC team

‘’Officials have also indicated that there are plans to charge Haqqani with sedition and high treason, using columns published in the English-language weekly newspaper Friday Times and the Urdu-language daily Jang as evidence of his subversive tendencies.’’

Another journalist being publicly pilloried by the official media as a ‘traitor’ is Najam Sethi, chief editor of the Friday Times, who also gave an interview to the BBC team. At a press conference in Lahore on May 6, he gave details of threats and harassment he has received since, before a packed hall of about a hundred journalists and human rights activists.

A senior government official told him that his open criticism of the Sharif government is viewed by as part of his attempts to ‘’destabilize the country, overthrow Sharif and install a national government’’, said Sethi, amused at being considered so powerful.

The efforts to publicly discredit him started on May 4 with a morning transmission programme on state-controlled television during a discussion on accountability – the buzzword these days in Pakistan – and how journalists should also be held accountable, ‘’especially when people like Najam Sethi go to India and talk against Pakistan’’ – a reference to his recent lecture in Delhi at the invitation of the Indo-Pakistan Friendship Society headed by former Indian prime minister I.K. Gujral.

The allegation of unpatriotic behaviour was repeated the next day in the same programme, and the next morning, a ‘’distorted and false news item about my lecture in India was published by two Lahore newspapers, The Nation and Nawa-e-Waqt, without bothering to ask for my version although I know the editors personally.’’

Asked about his previous relations with Sharif, he explained that in 1994, Sharif, then in the opposition, had come unannounced to his residence and ‘’asked forgiveness for the excesses committed when he was Prime Minister. I told him that his coming to my house was enough and all was forgiven. When he was elected this time, he asked me to join his team as a Senator and advisor; I refused. Now they want to arrest me on charges of being a traitors,’’ said Sethi.

He said that if anything happened to him, his family, or his staff, the government of Pakistan would be directly responsible.

Ejaz Haider, news editor for the Friday Times, has also been threatened. On May 4 he received a warning to ``Put up bullet-proof windows on your car.``

‘’I was expecting something,’’ says Haider, a defence studies expert outspoken in his criticism of Pakistan’s nuclear policy who has recently returned after giving a series of talks in the USA. ‘’I’m just surprised it came so late.’’

Talking about the situation, he said,‘’In my talk at the Middle East Institute about state-society relations in Pakistan, I mentioned the press and how it had institutionalised itself, with the caveat, however, that it was still under pressure not only from non-state actors but also from irresponsible governments that have the tendency to declare themselves
synonymous with the state.’’

‘’This comes in handy both to the governments as well as non-state actors because the country is claimed to have been begotten in the name of some ideology -- theodology is more like it -- it is an ideology tempered with the fire of theology.’’

Given that, coupled with the prime minister’s low IQ and ‘’the kind of power he has amassed and the ritualistic piety that he believes in, and we have a monster to contend with.’’
Haider caustically reminds Information Minister Mushahid Hussain, a former journalist himself, of the old saying that you can do anything with a bayonet except sit on it. ‘’So don`t even attempt it.’’

But Hussain, in a statement on World Press Freedom Day, asserted confidently that his government was ‘media friendly’.

After all, incidents like a journalist’s car being pushed out of his house into the street and being set on fire in the middle of the night is not necessarily something that will necessarily be seen as a threat to the free press. But when the incident takes place, as it did on the morning of May 5, with Imtiaz Alam, current affairs editor for The News in Lahore, who has been receiving threatening phone calls for some time for his dissenting columns, the government’s protestations are hard to believe.

‘’I wish they’d burnt the old car,’’ says Alam, scratching his beard and trying to salvage some humour from the situation, thinking of the charred remains of his brand-new, un-insured Suzuki Khyber..
Like Haider, Alam too had been expecting some ‘action’. ‘’Maybe they held off because of the conference,’’ he says, referring to the ground-breaking Pakistan-India Parliamentarians Conference that he organised recently, in which the government also participated. He has recently been particularly vocal about the accountability process directed by Sen. Saifur Rehman.
The CPJ has protested to the government for its apparent conducting of ‘’an orchestrated campaign to intimidate the independent media in Pakistan’’ and preventing them ‘’from collaborating with journalists working for international news organizations.’’

Peshwar based publisher of the English language daily The Frontier Post and Urdu-language Maidan, Rehmat Shah Afridi has never worked for an international news organisation. He was arrested last month for the possession of charas (grass) and is currently in Lahore’s Camp Jail where he is not being allowed visitors.

But journalists believe that the charges against Mr Afridi are fabricated. He has for some time been under pressure from the authorities, for his publications’ reports over the last few months on corruption in the ANF (anti narcotics force) and government.

A source close to Afridi confided that since November ‘98 the pressure had been mounting and he had been repeatedly summoned by the Ehtesab (Accountability) Bureau and ‘’told to implicate Asif Zardari and other big names like Aftab Sherpao in drug cases’’.

It has been learnt Afridi was intercepted at a Lahore hotel by armed men in plainclothes with silenced revolvers, and according to a source, ‘tied and blindfolded and told to cooperate in implicating Sharif’s political opponents. He was tortured with electric currents and made to talk into the telephone and ask for a consignment. He thought that he was about to be killed.’’

Afridi was later taken to the ANF office and ‘’told that his voice was on tape settling a heroin deal, and he could get out of it by implicating Zardari, Sherpao etc. in it.’’

Like Sethi, and earlier, Mir Shakilur Rehman of the Jang Group of newspapers which clashed with the government a couple of months ago, Afridi too was publicly denounced on the state-owned television, and reports printed in sections of the press.
‘’He was remanded to 14 days custody, but never interrogated about the charas. Instead, he says, he was continuously asked to cooperate about implicating Zardari etc. in drug cases,’’ says Afridi’s lawyer, who feared that Maidan may be forced to close down. Journalists in Lahore, Nowshera, Mardan, Islamabad and Peshawar have protested about Afridi’s arrest and the Khyber Union of Journalists is continuing a token hunger strike in protest.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in a press release of April 6 also denounced the sensational arrest of Afridi. ‘’ While the law should take its course, strong misgivings have been caused due to the manner in which
this was done and the government`s record both of selectivity in the choice of its targets and its demonstrated desire to curb freedom of the press….

‘’There is also no reason why the court proceedings should have been sought to be delayed if the ANF had such a cast-iron case against Mr. Rehmat Shah Afridi as it claims.’’

Meanwhile, in the southern province of Sindh, journalists in remote rural areas continue to be threatened for reports that reflect unfavourably on the police. Dharki-based journalist Sikandar Bhutto told a recent meeting of human rights activists in Lahore about the arrest and torture of a journalist Abu Awais, who has been left deaf in the process.

Awais, the correspondent of Sindhi-language daily Koshish, had reported the kidnapping of 13 men on the night of Jan 1, 1999, and consistently followed the story until Jan 18. However, the police refused to file a report saying that no such kidnapping had taken place. The complaint was only admitted after pressure from human rights activists.

On Jan 24, the bodies of two of the kidnapped men were found with ransom notes and the story was picked up by other newspapers. The remaining men were freed after a ransom of Rs 700,000.
The area police filed a false case of sodomy against Awais, who was arrested and tortured. After a great deal of pressure from local journalists, the case was dropped on the orders of a Judicial Magistrate on March 10, ‘on the ground that no evidence whatsoever has been collected against the accused’.
Bhutto himself has been threatened with false cases, and many other journalists are proceeding more carefully with how they report on the police, he said.

Forwarded by Pervez Hoodbhoy:


This is 9:30am Islamabad time on Saturday, May 8.

Around 2:00am today intruders broke into the bedroom of Najam Sethi, editor of the Friday Times. They beat him badly and took him away. His wife Jugnu was also attacked but succeeded in fleeing. She is currently in hiding in Lahore
and communicated the above incident. Najam is missing.

In the last week there have been several such attacks on the press. Hussain Haqqani is still missing, Imtiaz Alam`s car was burnt, plus several others attacked or harassed. NGO`s
are being targetted on PTV. The government`s going berserk.

Sethi`s Crime



Pakistan on the eve of

the new millenium



India International Centre, April 30th, 1999

by Najam Sethi, Editor, The Friday Times, Pakistan



Mr I K Gujral, Prof Satish Kumar, ladies and gentlemen, I am honoured to be here among such a distinguished gathering of Indian policy makers, scholars, senior journalists, analysts and keen Pakistan watchers. I will keep my lecture short so that we can spend time on questions and answers and benefit from an informal dialogue at the end of the lecture. I assume that most people here today are broadly familiar with political developments in Pakistan.



At the start, I should like to inform you that the gist of this lecture has been made at various Pakistani forums already. Indeed, the part relating to Pakistan was published almost word for word in my newspaper as an editorial some months ago. So it should not come as a surprise to my Pakistani compatriots here and at home. I do not practice double-standards, as will be evident in due course. I am deeply and passionately concerned about what is going on in my country and I am not afraid of speaking the truth at any forum in my quest for posing the problem.



Pakistan`s socio-political environment is in the throes of a severe multi-dimensional crisis. I refer to six major crises which confront Pakistan on the eve of the new millenium: (1) the crisis of identity and ideology; (2) the crisis of law, constitution and political system; (3) the crisis of economy; (4) the crisis of foreign policy; (5) the crisis of civil society; and (6) the crisis of national security.



These crises haven`t suddenly emerged out of the blue. I have been talking and writing about the inexorable germination and development of these crises for many years. Now they are all upon Pakistan simultaneously, with greater or lesser intensity.



1. The crisis of identity and ideology refers to the fact that after fifty years, Pakistanis are still unable to collectively agree upon who we are as a nation, where we belong, what we believe in and where we want to go. In terms of our identity and our demands, are we Pakistanis first and then Punjabis, Sindhis, Baloch, Pathan or Mohajirs or vice versa? Do we belong - in the sense of our future bearings and anchors - do we belong to South Asia or do we belong to the Middle-East? In terms of ideology, are we Muslims in a moderate Muslim state or Muslims in an orthodox Islamic state? In other words, are we supposed to be like Saudi Arabia or Iran - which are orthodox Islamic states - or are we supposed to be like Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Algeria etc which are supposed to be liberal Muslim states? And if none of these fits the bill, what then? Whose version and vision of Islam do we follow? The Quran and Sunnah, say some people. Well, if the Quaid i Azam and Allama Iqbal both had their own interpretations of how the Quran and Sunnah were to be applied in the real life of a modern state like Pakistan, the problem has been compounded by the myriad interpretations of their interpretations of an Islamic state. And the problem doesn`t end there. The Jamaat i Islami, the Sipah i Sahaba, the Jamiat i Ulema i Islam and countless other Islamic parties and Islamic sects all have their so-called exclusive Islamic axes to grind. So there is no agreement, no consensus on this issue. Indeed, there is so much tension, violence and confusion associated with this issue that it has begun to hurt Pakistan considerably. It has assumed the form of an identity and ideological crisis.



2. The crisis of law, constitution and political system refers to the fact that (a) there is not one set of laws in Pakistan but two - the Anglo-Saxon tradition which we inherited from the past and the Islamic tradition which we have foisted in recent times. Most Pakistanis are trained and experienced in the former but some Pakistanis hanker for the latter. The two traditions co-exist in an environment of fear, corruption and hypocrisy. Increasingly, they seem to be at serious odds with each other, as for example on the question of how to treat interest rates in a modern capitalist economy, what status to grant to universal human and fundamental rights, how to treat women and minorities; etc. (b) The crisis is also reflected in the nature and extent to which the constitution has been mangled by democrats and dictators, lawyers and judges, all alike. The reference here is to several highly controversial constitutional amendments, past and pending; but it is also to highly contentious, even suspect, decisions by the courts acting as handmaidens to the executive; and to the motivations and actions of certain judges in pursuit of personal ambition, pecuniary gains or political advancement. Indeed, many lawmakers do not obey the law and some of our judges are perceived in contemptuous terms by the public. (c) The crisis is manifest, above all, in the rapid public disenchantment with the political system of so-called democracy. Democracy is supposed to be about the supremacy of the law and constitution, about the necessity of checks and balances between the different organs of the state, about the on-going accountability of public office holders, and so on. But it has degenerated into a system based exclusively on elections which return deaf and dumb public representatives to rubber stamp parliaments. So we have the form of democracy but not its essence or content. We have the rituals of democracy but not its soul. I don`t know what this system is, but it is certainly not democracy.



3. The crisis of economy refers to the fact that (a) Pakistan is well and truly bankrupt - indeed if the international community had not bailed out Pakistan recently, the country would have succumbed to financial default. (b) Worse, we appear to have no means left by which to lift ourselves up by our own bootstraps without a massive convulsion in state and society. This is manifest in our total dependence on foreign assistance. Indeed, the crisis of economy is so severe that it has begun to impinge on our sovereignty as an independent state and is eroding our traditional construction of national security. The economic crisis is reflected in a crisis of growth, a crisis of distribution, a crisis of production and a crisis of finance. It is threatening massive and violent dislocations in state and society.



4. The crisis of foreign policy is now coming home to roost. We are not only friendless in the region in which we live, we are being blackballed and blackmailed by the international community to which we are indebted up to our ears. If foreign policy is supposed to be rooted in and geared to domestic objectives and concerns, we have reversed the order of things. Our foreign policy seems to have a life of its own. It dictates our domestic policies rather than the other way round. This is why there is no long term consistency or strength in it. One day, we say that Kashmir is the ``core issue without whose prior settlement none of the other contentious issues with India can be resolved``. The next day, we say that progress on the other issues can be made without a settlement of the Kashmir issue. One day we say that Kashmir is a multilateral issue, the next day we emphasise the urgency of bilateral dialogue with India. One day, we are quick to recognise the Taliban government in Kabul and exhort the other nations of the world to follow suit; the next day we give our blessings to the idea of a broad-based, multi-ethnic, multi-religious ``consensus`` government in Kabul. One day Iran is our historic and strategic friend, the next day we stand accused by Iran of unmentionable actions. One day, Central Asia is billed as the promised land. The next day, it is arrayed against us in hostile terms. One day, the United States is our Godfather. The next day it is the ugly American. The worst has now come to pass. For fifty years we worried about the threat on our eastern borders with India. Today we are anxious about our western front with Iran and Afghanistan.



5. The crisis of civil society is demonstrated in many ways. In increasingly low turnouts for elections. In continuing deterioration of law and order. In rising sectarianism, ethnicity and regionalism. In the breakdown of civil utilities and amenities. In the erosion of the administrative system. In violence and armed conflict. In mass criminalisation and alienation of the people. In a rising graph of mental disorders, suicides, drug abuse, rape, kidnappings and outright terrorism. The rise of criminal and religious mafias, kabza groups, extra-judicial killings etc testify to the breakdown of social connections and civil compacts between the Pakistani state and the Pakistani people.



6. These crises have all culminated into a severe crisis of national security. Pakistan`s political system, its political leadership, its structure of law and constitution, its administrative framework, its economic stagnation, its ideological hypocrisy and its friendless foreign policy are no longer tenable. They have all contributed to a comprehensive erosion of National Security. If the tide is not reversed quickly, it will engulf Pakistan in its wake. Indeed, the argument that Pakistan is a ``failing state`` made by some people is based on perceptions of this multi-dimensional crisis.



7. So, if Pakistanis know what the hell is going on, and if Pakistanis know where the hell they are going, the question remains: how the hell do Pakistanis get out of this hell?



8. This question has two parts. First, what sort of agendas are required to be implemented to get out of this hell? Second, who will implement such agendas?



9. The answer to the first question is simple enough. Or at least it is simple enough for me. I ask my fellow Pakistanis to look at each of the crises referred to above and then I demand that the factors which have led to the crisis should be swiftly addressed. Let us take each of the crises and remark on how to resolve the crisis.

(a) Crisis of ideology: In my view, there is only one modern day ideology over whose application there can be no bitter or divisive controversy and which will be acceptable to all Pakistanis, irrespective of caste, creed, gender, region, ethnicity, sect, etc. And that is the ideology of economic growth, the ideology of full employment, the ideology of distributive justice and social welfare. I say Pakistan should make this ideology the ideology of the state and thereby bury all false consciousness and false ideologies. (b) Crisis of Law, Constitution and Political System: I say Pakistan must revamp the political system and revise the Constitution so that the political system and the constitution are made to serve the people below instead of the corrupt elites above. (c) Crisis of Economy: I say that the Pakistani state should honour its international contracts; enforce its domestic loan repayments; tax the rich; dispossess the corrupt; live within its means; vitalise its human resources; export the value of its scientific talents; establish and enforce a genuine private-public partnership in which the private sector produces efficiently and the public sector regulates effectively. (d) Crisis of civil society: I say enforce the rule of law; disarm society; disband militias; decentralise decision-making and power; establish accountability; protect minorities and women; create social nets for the disadvantaged, poor and destitute; provide decentralised and quick justice (e) Crisis of Foreign Policy: I say make friends not masters or enemies; bury cold-war hatchets; renounce post-cold-war jihads; negotiate terms of trade not territorial ambitions; redefine strategic depth to mean emphasis on internal will rather than external space; (f) Crisis of National Security: I say redefine security to mean not only military defense but also economic vitality, social cohesion and international respect; and I say Pakistan should determine its minimal optimal defence deterrent but shun an arms race.



10. The answer to the second question - namely, who will pursue and implement this agenda - is difficult only for one reason: I cannot see even one leader or institution in Pakistan who or which personifies National Power and has the three virtues or elements which are required to get Pakistan out of this mess. These are: vision, courage and integrity. The vision to chart a particular course; the courage to implement it ruthlessly; and the integrity to ensure that it doesn`t get derailed. My hope, of course, is that someone or some institution will throw up such leadership in time to come. My fear is that if this doesn`t happen soon enough, it may be too late later.



I would now like to turn briefly to one factor that impinges greatly on Pakistan`s past, present and future, one which should concern all of you who are assembled here today. That is Pakistan`s relationship with India. In one crucial sense, India remains a determining factor vis a vis Pakistan. The Pakistani state has come to be fashioned largely in response to perceived and propagated, real and imagined threats to its national security from India. The mentality and outlook of the Pakistani state is therefore that of a historically besieged state. That is why conceptions of national security, defined in conventional military terms, dominate the Pakistani state`s thinking on many issues. Indeed, that is why state outlook dominates government policies. That is why Pakistan`s foreign policy runs its domestic policy rather than the other way round. That is why Pakistan`s economy is hostage to Pakistan`s cold war conceptions of ``national security`` rather than being an integral part of it. That is why Pakistan is more a state-nation rather than a nation-state.



This has had far-reaching implications for the lack of development of a sustainable and stable democratic political culture in Pakistan. Indeed, and more critically, it has directly spawned extra-state institutions espousing Islamic fundamentalism and jehad. And it is these forces which are undermining the compact between the state and people of Pakistan, thereby adversely impacting on political discourse in the country.



Pakistan`s obsession with India hurts Pakistan deeply. But the roots of this obsession cannot be shrugged away by India. Indeed, India may be said to be the root cause of Pakistan`s insecurity. Apart from pre-partition history, there is the fact of a great injustice done to Pakistan by India over Kashmir and the dismemberment of Pakistan in which India played a critical and leading role. For precisely this reason, one of the fallouts of this obsession is the decade long low-intensity-conflict in Kashmir. Another is the tit-for-tat nuclear and missile tests by Pakistan and its refusal to sign a no-first-strike agreement with India which in turn means that Pakistan cannot get a no-war pact from India.



In this way, if Pakistan`s past is umbilically linked to that of India, its future cannot but be shaped by India`s future, as well as have an impact on it. If the rise of fundamentalist Islam threatens Pakistan`s body-politic, India cannot expect to escape its negative fallout. If a nuclear arsenal is assembled in Pakistan, India`s security cannot be vouchsafed by all the nuclear weapons at its disposal. If Pakistan fails as a nation-state and becomes a rogue regime marked by social anarchy and upheaval, India`s army will not be able to contain its disruptive and destabilising impact. If Pakistan is drawn into an arms race with India, the logic of the situation will fuel the sources of conflict between the two countries rather than provide security to either country.



Of course, this does not mean that India should constantly look over its shoulder while seeking to determine its own national security policies. But it does mean that India cannot ever be a great power or great nation if its own backyard is seething with resentment and turmoil. Indeed, as long as India`s quest for great powerdom is based on its strategy of military outreach, it is bound to be thwarted in its ambitions by tit-for-tat Pakistan. Therefore India will be recognised as a great power in the new millenium not on the basis of its numerical military superiority in the region but by the extent to which the countries of South Asia, including Pakistan, are economically inter-dependent on each other and take their lead independent of super powers. A pre-requisite for this is that India should make enduring peace with Pakistan on principled and honourable terms and resolve the Kashmir dispute, thereby helping the forces of civil society in Pakistan to fashion a new state which is subservient to the Pakistani nation instead of the other way round.



By way of concluding, I should just like to remind everyone one lesson of modern history: vibrant and stable democracies are less likely to go to war than authoritarian states which live and survive on the basis or threat of war.



Thank you very much for your patience. I would be happy to take your questions now.



Q: If Pakistan is in such a crisis, why should the Kashmiris want to join it?



NS: That is a question which you Indians should ask the Kashmiris. But you know what they will say, that is why you don`t ask this question of them. At any rate, if 100 million people in Pakistan are in a bad way, over 400 million people in India are worse off. So let us not try to score points over each other. Let us try and address the real issues.



Q: Will Pakistan accept the LOC as an international border?



NS. No, never. It is only in India`s interest to legitimise the status quo. We want to change it because it is illegitimate.



Q: Is the Lahore Summit a historic event?



NS: The Lahore Summit will only go down in history if it is an anti-history event, if it succeeds in burying the history of the last 50 years. But that is the great challenge. And this is not the first time that the ball is in India`s court. In 1989, both countries agreed in Islamabad to resolve the Siachin dispute. An agreement was drafted and settled. But then Rajiv Gandhi went back to India and resiled from it. Again, in 1997, Nawaz Sharif and I K Gujral were said to have made a ``historic breakthrough.`` Eight working groups on eight outstanding disputes, including Kashmir, were supposed to be set up. But India resiled from setting up the Kashmir working group some months later. This time, Nawaz Sharif and Atal Behari Vajpayee have agreed to the same agenda as in 1997. Will India start discussing Kashmir seriously with a view to finding a solution? On Pakistan`s side, this is the best opportunity for progress because Nawaz Sharif has gone out of his way to start the dialogue by implicitly making two informal concessions: there is no mention of Kashmir as the ``core`` issue in the Lahore declaration and there is no reference to the UN resolutions. This means that Pakistan is prepared to start talking with India over all issues simultaneously, something it was not prepared to do for many years. So the ball is in India`s court yet again. Unless India makes an enduring and honourable settlement with Pakistan over Kashmir, there will be no peace in the sub-continent. If this dialogue doesn`t take off, a great opportunity will be lost. No PM other than Nawaz Sharif could have gone so far, so quickly, reaching out to India. Will India reciprocate?



Q: Why doesn`t Pakistan accept a no-first-strike agreement with India?



NS: Pakistan`s conventional defense capabilities have been greatly reduced since the Americans cut off all assistance to Pakistan in 1990. Its reliance on the nuclear deterrent is therefore all the greater. That is why India should be cautioned about considering ``hot-pusuit`` into Pakistani territory. Our retaliation would be swift and massive. My question to all of you is: why doesn`t India agree to a no-war pact with Pakistan if its intentions are honourable?



Q: Is Nawaz Sharif trying to Islamise Pakistan via the Shariah Bill?



NS: No. The 15th amendment is a horrendous piece of pending legislation. It has nothing to do with Islam. Its sole purpose is to make Nawaz Sharif an absolute dictator. If that amendment is passed, it will lead to bitter strife and instability which will worsen the crises I have been talking about.