1000 yrs in Less Than 100 hrs?
About the best thing that could have happened to Pakistan and India was to have no agreement at all at Agra. Munich is a benchmark that compromises made on appeasement can have a terrible backlash. Refusing to fall into the trap of having to satisfy an expectant world at any cost, the two countries decided to walk away from the negotiating table without a Joint Declaration containing compromises lacking sincere intent. There may not have been the success of a Declaration, there was no failure of the peace process at Agra. Consider the intent behind a play of words in the language of the draft declaration, any agreement reached under such compulsions would have been torn apart by domestic dissent on either side before the ink was dry, the two leaders would have been eaten up alone by the lions-in-waiting on either side. Maturity prevailed in foregoing a short-time exultation of a contrived success, and in agreeing to continue future discussions in the congenial atmosphere that seems to have largely replaced the public acrimony of the past the countries may have had their first real success on the road to achieving lasting peace. Instead of the dialogue of the deaf prevailing since Kargil, a growing understanding (and a public deference hitherto missing) was manifest in the statements of the two Foreign Ministers the day after Agra. Many commentators have observed that 54 years of mistrust, suspicion, conflict, etc could never be erased in three days, unfortunately the divide goes back over a thousand years plus. Given such an environment even if the miracle had happened, the very speed of the understanding would have been its undoing.
