In the context of developments in our Punjab, it is difficult to think of anything more ridiculous, indeed insulting, than the agreement which the Union Home secretary has signed with his Pakistani counterpart on joint patrolling of some sectors of the border. Implicit in this agreement is the belief that Islamabad may cooperate with New Delhi in the battle against terrorism in Punjab and that it is worth our while to explore this possibility. But does such a possibility exist at all? Nothing that anyone in the government, from the Prime Minister downwards, has said can suggest this to be the case. In recent months, Mr Rajiv Gandhi has said any number of times that Pakistan has stepped up its aid for the terrorists in Punjab. And now the Home secretary, Mr Somiah, has told us that he has confronted his Pakistani counterpart with incontrovertible evidence to show that arms and ammunition continue to flow into India from Pakistan and that well-known terrorists and their supporters abroad continue to visit Pakistan freely and frequently. What then is the basis of the belief that Islamabad will abandon its support for the terrorists? And why? No, Mr Gandhi, Pakistan has been pursuing a long-term plan and it is not going to drop it, especially when it is under no pressure to do so. It is a safe bet that the proposed joint patrolling will not produce results m terms of capture of terrorists and the ending of supplies to them. But it will definitely produce another kind of result. It will discredit India’s legitimate charges and lend credence to Pakistan’s fraudulent disclaimers.
We have also been told that Pakistan has rejected the Indian “proposal” for hot pursuit to apprehend terrorists and smugglers crossing the border. This will suggest that Mr Somiah put such a“proposal” to Mr S. K. Mahmood. If this is in fact true, it tells us a lot about how New Delhi conducts relations with Islamabad. Surely one must be naive beyond words to believe that Islamabad could possibly accept hot pursuit when it does not even admit that terrorists freely visit Pakistan. Surely no government has ever engaged in hot pursuit with the consent of the country concerned. Surely a government thinks of hot pursuit when, on the one hand, it has been driven to despair by hostile activities of the other side and, on the other, it feels confident of its strength. There are situations like the one the US faced in respect of Viet Cong sanctuaries in Kampuchea when the concerned government (Kampuchea’s in that case) is too weak to cope with the infiltrators (Viet Cong). But surely Pakistan does not fall into that category. So the issue has been whether India has the will to engage in hot pursuit. New Delhi’s answer is a resounding “no”.