Mansoor Jafar Al Arabiya Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh squandered a golden opportunity to encourage peace between belligerent, nuclear-armed neighbors, Pakistan and India, at the UN General Assembly session. Instead, he chose to adhere to a hawkish, extremist stance against Pakistan. High hopes were pinned on the much awaited meeting between Nawaz Sharif and Dr. Singh, the rival leaders in South Asia, at a time when the urgency for resolving tensions and establishing lasting peace mounts higher than ever before. Faced with the daunting challenge of winning a majority for his Congress (I) party in the upcoming elections, Dr. Singh ignored the friendly gestures and peace overtures of Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at the General Assembly session. Crushing all hopes for peace in South Asia, he chose to pursue the requirements of political expediency back home and woo hardliners from the folds of the archrival Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the coming elections. In what was deemed as an act of sabotage and failure to promote peace between the two nuclear powers, in his address to the General Assembly, Dr. Singh reiterated Delhi's allegation that “Pakistan was the epicenter of terrorism in the world,” and demanded that Islamabad's funding and patronization of terrorists should be stopped. Dr. Singh's government is about to complete a second term in office and is approaching elections in a few months with mounting pressure on winning for the third time in a row and beating the Hindu nationalist BJP. Therefore, he is unable to take any big decisions and bring any policy shifts vis-à-vis archrival Pakistan. On the other hand, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's party PML-N has taken to the field with a fresh mandate; he is eager to make peace with India and in a better position to achieve this end. In his address, Sharif reiterated that Kashmir, the core issue between India and Pakistan and over which four wars have been fought by the two countries, should be solved using UN resolutions that call for a plebiscite in Kashmir state giving the people a choice of whether they want to join Pakistan or India. But, Dr. Singh declared Kashmir an integral part of India going against India's original stance of 1948 when Delhi approached the UN to ask for help in solving the Kashmir dispute. Despite his political handicap, if Dr. Manmohan Singh had resorted to a reconciliatory approach instead of extremism, he could have turned this vital meeting with Nawaz Sharif into an important milestone for improving bilateral relations and reducing tension between the two countries. This realistic approach could have saved part of the funds the two countries spend on defense purchases enabling them to divert funds to the welfare of their people to raise their living standards. Dr. Singh should keep in mind the similarly tense situation in 1999 when then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee responded positively to Nawaz Sharif and went to Pakistan to sign a historic peace road map the “Lahore Declaration.” Dr. Singh's speech reflected a desire to turn his back on the dialogue process with Pakistan and implied that he was more interested in winning the upcoming elections than establishing lasting peace in South Asia. He should not forget that in the last 66 years, the Indian army has killed more Kashmiris than were killed in the struggle between Indians and British colonists from 1857 to 1947. Immediately after Dr. Singh's address, his political rival and the prime minister designate of the BJP, Narendra Modi, told a large public meeting in New Delhi that Nawaz Sharif had insulted Dr. Singh by referring to his protests with President Obama against Pakistan as the “bellowing of a peasant woman.” However, the reports of Nawaz Sharif using those words during an off-the-record talk remained unconfirmed by leading journalists. It turned out that the discussion was an exclusive report by an anchor of a leading Pakistani news channel. Yet, the BJP leadership has continued to increase pressure on Dr. Singh by dubbing it a deliberate insult aimed at the elected Indian prime minister. The fact that Dr. Singh was under pressure from his political rivals back home and used his speech to the UN General Assembly for his election campaign was quite evident from his beating the old drum and his failure to accept the peace initiatives offered by Nawaz Sharif. He forgot to mention Pakistan's immense sacrifices as the frontline state in the war on terror, suffering from terrorism unmatched in the world's history which has caused over 70,000 casualties in just over a decade. Pakistan has remained the worst victim of terrorism since joining the world alliance against terrorism. This can be judged by the hundreds of bomb blasts and drone attacks on its soil that have left around 70,000 people dead, including armed forces personnel and civilians. In the past week, the country has been hit by a new wave of terror with four bomb blasts killing over 200 people and wounding even more after parliament authorized the government to hold talks with the Taliban to end the insurgency-like situation. In his speech to the UN, Nawaz Sharif declared that following the upsurge in terror incidents last week, his government has found no justification in holding talks with the Taliban. Pakistani agencies have time and again declared that they have solid proof of Indian involvement in insurgency in Baluchistan and tribal areas. Indian Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde himself admitted to having terrorist training camps on Indian soil run by Hindu fanatics with the purpose of carrying out attacks of genocide against the Muslim minority. The Nehru family used to be considered moderate and liberal in comparison to hardline political rivals like the BJP. But in 1971, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, while referring to Indian military intervention that dismembered Pakistan, proudly declared that India had finally sunk the two-nation theory in the Bay of Bengal. This boast proved that the Nehru family and their Congress (I) party were as fanatic as the BJP, RSS, VHP and other such groups that aim to purge India of all minorities through ethnic and religious cleansing. Now the representative of the fourth generation of the Nehru family, Rahul Gandhi, is singing an anti-Pakistan tune. He was quoted as telling the media that dismembering Pakistan was the biggest achievement of his family. In view of the prevailing hardline, anti-Pakistan stance of the Indian political leaderships in general, Dr. Manmohan Singh's tirade against Pakistan in the UN was not unusual. But Delhi should remember that such an attitude will continue to make the dream of lasting peace in South Asia elusive. – Mansoor Jafar is editor of Al Arabiya Urdu based in Islamabad. Follow him on Twitter @mansoorjafar
