India and Pakistan are equally victims of terror'. This is not Hillary Rodham Clinton attempting to equate terrorist Pakistan and terrorised India. 'India and Pakistan share a common destiny'. This is not US President Barack Hussein Obama cajoling the estranged cousins to love each other. 'A rising India cannot assert its rightful place in the comity of nations without good relations with Pakistan'. This is again not the foreign secretary of the US or her president counselling India to better befriend Pakistan. Nor is it the Prime Minister of Pakistan speaking out his mind to the media to communicate with India. It is the catalogue of statements of Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India, on Pakistan. Not a syllable in his statements strengthens India's security or geopolitical interests; on the contrary, these thoughtless words positively harm both. Singh's statements seem to reflect just what the US, which sees itself as the informal interlocutor between India and Pakistan, would like to hear India say.

This is an old story. A couple of weeks ago, the Prime Minister moved further to do what Pakistan has been dying for years to make India do, but failing always. On July 16, Manmohan Singh signed a joint statement with his Pakistani counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani at the Egyptian resort of Sharm-el-Sheikh in which he agreed that terror sponsored by Pakistan should be de-linked from talks with Pakistan on resolving all issues, that is, India should keep its dialogue with Pakistan on even if terror attacks, like on Mumbai last year, continue.

By this one-line concession to Pakistan, Manmohan has destroyed the foundation of Indo-Pakistan dialogue settled on January 6, 2004. That was the day when, for the first time, Pervez Musharraf committed in writing to Atal Behari Vajpayee that Pakistan would 'not allow the territory under its control to be used for terrorism against India'. That was when Pakistan first implied that its territory and jihadis were involved in the terror against India. Till then, Pakistan had denied both.

The whole world, except the US, its mentor, sees Pakistan as a merchant of terror; not its victim. It is ironic that the title 'victim of terror' has been confirmed on Pakistan by India, the principal victim of its terror - courtesy Manmohan Singh. See further. Pakistan, an Islamic theocratic state, has ethnic-cleansed the Hindus, from 10 per cent to one per cent of its population since 1947.

India is a democratic state where, for thousands of years, all religions have coexisted; the Muslim population has increased from some 10 per cent to 13 per cent since 1947. Not just theocratic, Pakistan is a military state populated by state-supported militants. The difference between Pakistan and India is this: as a country India needs, therefore has, a military; in Pakistan the military needs, therefore has, a country. How can these two countries have or share a common destiny? No one, including the US, which is dying to broker peace between India and Pakistan, would ever say the two 'share common destiny'. When the Indian prime minister said so, the world, why even the Pakistanis, must have laughed within.

He did not stop at the damage inflicted by de-linking Pak-terror against India from talks with Pak. He also handed over a propaganda weapon to Pakistan. The whole world knows Pakistan is stoking trouble in Kashmir. Pakistan has for decades been trying to counter this by saying India is aiding the rebels in Balochistan and also - believe it - the Taliban in its North-West Frontier. It has been trying to imply that India is equally a sinner. The enlightened world has dismissed Pakistan's charge as silly. But, the joint statement at Sharm-el-Sheikh also records that the Pakistani prime minister 'mentioned' to the Indian prime minister 'that Pakistan has some information on threats in Balochistan and elsewhere'. This is the first time India has ever listened to a Pakistani mention on Balochistan. This has handed an AK-47 propaganda weapon to Pakistan to shoot India with at every meeting from now on and tell the world that even India has impliedly recognised Pakistani concerns about its role in Balochistan and elsewhere in promoting terror against Pakistan.

So the Prime Minister has not only agreed that Pakistan and India are both victims of terror; he has acknowledged that he has lent his ears to Pakistan's charge that India also promotes terror. The picture the world gets is that if Pakistan does it to India in Kashmir, India does it to Pakistan in Balochistan and elsewhere.

The Sharm-el-Sheikh declaration is not based on any wrong advice to the Prime Minister. It is perhaps in spite of the best advice, not to do anything like this. The media has reported that Manmohan Singh the prime minister himself has claimed credit for this great performance that damages India's interests. Singh and Gilani had had a long and one-to-one conversation after the foreign secretaries of the two countries were unable to agree on the draft India proposed. Singh himself said that this is what happened. "Afterwards we called the foreign secretaries and I asked the Pakistan prime minister to sum up what we had agreed. I added a little bit. Then we instructed the foreign secretaries to come with an agreed draft". So it is actually Gilani's draft with a bit from Manmohan that became the joint statement. No head of state would have handled such a sensitive issue as casually as he has done in this case.

The Prime Minister's amateurish performance has shocked all including his own party. The Congress first refused to endorse his statement. Gilani has praised Manmohan Singh for his political 'sagacity' and 'statesmanship'. But his own party has 'refused to feel proud of him', says the media. Senior leaders first distanced themselves from the prime minister's goof-up on both terror and Balochistan. He then ran to 10 Janpath; Madam Sonia stepped in and gagged the party. "Accept what has happened," she ordered. The party's dissent, a rare phenomenon, was snuffed out.

The Daily News in Pakistan gleefully reported that the Congress had finally decided to stand by the deal. Now new explanations about the intent and meaning of the statement are being given, inside and outside Parliament, at huge violence to the words in the statement. But what is critical is not how India, but Pakistan and the world read the statement. For them the words are clear.

QED: Shiv Shankar Menon, Indian foreign secretary, says that it was 'just bad drafting'; but he would not say whose bad draft it was. Gilani's draft with Singh's bit can only be bad for India, and it is.

Courtesy: www.expressbuzz.com, July 29, 2009