RAVEENDRAN—AFP/GETTY IMAGES

HIS OWN MAN Singh talks with Congress Party chief Sonia Gandhi

Alone at the Summit
	Manmohan Singh is pragmatic, honest—and starting to show some steel as Prime Minister of India
	By Alex Perry | New Delhi

Posted Monday, September 20, 2004; 20:00 HKT
A Prime Minister's first 100 days in office are supposed to be a honeymoon. Things haven't worked out that way for India's Manmohan Singh—and it shows. At his official New Delhi residence, the Prime Minister greets visitors with a kindly but harried expression. In an exclusive interview with TIME, he answers questions in a shy voice, shifting in his seat. His eyes look tired and bloodshot, and his gaze bounces around the room, perhaps betraying the toll India's top job has taken on him.

The pressure began from the day in May when Singh's Congress Party boss, Sonia Gandhi, announced after the party's surprise general-election victory that she would forswear the Prime Minister's office. Gandhi, to cool protests over her Italian origins, handed the job to the gentlemanly 71-year-old Singh, an economist who has never won an election. Since then, Singh has labored under the perception that he is Gandhi's puppet, a political lightweight—and in Indian politics, that's like having a bull's-eye painted on your kurta. His right-wing opposition has attempted to take full advantage, aided by summer floods and droughts, rising inflation and slowing economic growth; on his other flank, Singh's Communist partners in Parliament have pushed their own agenda.

If that wasn't enough pressure, this week Singh meets Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York. There, a senior Indian official tells TIME, Singh will make an offer to help defuse South Asia's most dangerous flash point, Kashmir. India, says the official, will offer to "adjust" the Line of Control, the de facto border dividing Kashmir, "by a matter of miles" eastward. Indian analysts confirm that the offer has been under discussion, in India and with Pakistan's leadership, for months—even under the government that preceded Singh's. The official says its formal presentation in New York is a result of Singh's instruction that his foreign-affairs team think "out of the box" on Kashmir "to get a solution, and soon."

A senior Musharraf aide warns that in his experience "there is more sound than substance" to India's negotiations. But he confirms that a "territorial adjustment ... is one idea being broached" and that it is an idea in which "in the past, as in the present, we have shown interest."

A senior Pakistani foreign-affairs official likewise acknowledges that a "more productive agenda" is on the table for the New York meeting. "We want to make things happen there," he says. "We want implementable ideas. We have spoken to the Indians on this score, and hopefully the meeting will break new ground in Kashmiri diplomacy."

Diplomacy is all about timing, and Singh has chosen an interesting moment for his offer. Kashmiri militants in Pakistan say that Musharraf's government, under pressure from Washington, has suspended supplying them with training, funds and weapons. Indian intelligence reports that August—usually a bloody month in Kashmir—saw a drop in guerrilla arrivals from 303 in August 2003 to 62 this year. "They [Pakistan's military-intelligence service] were our fathers," laments a commander from the Lashkar-e-Toiba group. "They are with us no more." India's main demand of Pakistan in Kashmir is that Islamabad stop Islamic-militant infiltrations over the border. On its side, Pakistan insists on its inalienable right to the Muslim territories inside Indian Kashmir. For the first time in memory, both sides appear to be offering some of what the other wants. But however timely Singh's initiative might appear, his home audience might react very differently from diplomats in New York. Indian analysts have long warned that anything but a hard-line stance on Kashmir from a Congress government risks handing the Hindu right and its extremist allies a heaven-sent opportunity to accuse the foreign-born Gandhi of selling out the country.

So the key question about Singh has changed. At the start of his time in office, analysts were asking if he was a placeholder or a real Prime Minister. As Singh prepares to leave for New York, they now wonder if he has the vision plus the political street smarts to pursue peace with Pakistan without touching off political chaos at home. As he contemplates his position, Singh won't say he is enjoying himself. "The summit," he says, "is always lonely." But for now, it is his. Singh has become his own man.

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