The Poet And The Soldier

When the leaders of two snarling nations are personally committed to better ties, why is that so hard to accomplish? On the surface, a long list of differences separate Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. One is devoted to Hindu nationalism, the other to a strong Muslim nation. One governs the world's most populous democracy, the other rules by diktat. India's leader is 20 years older and the frail veteran of 47 years in politics; Pakistan's is a fit career soldier whose political life began just two years ago in a military coup. Vajpayee is a master orator given to flights of poetry; Musharraf is a plainspoken man with a blunt, forthright style. The first has succeeded by adroitly sidestepping conflict and finessing confrontation, the second by cutting straight to the core of a problem.

Yet Vajpayee and Musharraf ought to be able to do business together. Both are the moderate face of their hard-line constituencies and liberals in their private lives. Together, they control two of the world's seven declared nuclear arsenals. And each came to power proclaiming the same grand ambition: to bring peace to a subcontinent torn by futile hostility since it was partitioned into a mainly Hindu country and a mainly Muslim one in 1947.

They have tried before. Last July, at a summit in the northern Indian city of Agra, the two leaders looked ready to achieve a historic meeting of minds. The determined general and the affable poet-politician practically embraced as they showered each other with compliments. Vajpayee called Musharraf a "distinguished son of Delhi" (where he was born), and the Pakistani leader dubbed his counterpart India's "graceful elder." They parleyed in private for hours while aides anxiously waited outside the door. But the bonhomie ran aground on Kashmir when they could not agree even on whether to call it a "dispute," as Musharraf demanded, or an "issue," as Vajpayee insisted. The summit collapsed. When Musharraf baldly spilled his position to the Indian press before departing, he scored a propaganda victory that left the upstaged Vajpayee with a bitter aftertaste.

The general was, of course, the same man who had spoiled Vajpayee's previous peace initiative toward Pakistan. In early 1999, while Vajpayee and democratically elected President Nawaz Sharif were initialing a new chapter in bilateral relations in Lahore, Musharraf, then chief of the Pakistani armed forces, was orchestrating a daring incursion into Kashmir, into the Indian-held Kargil Heights. That provoked six weeks of bloody combat, cutting dead Vajpayee's cherished Lahore process.

Sept. 11 cast another shadow over the relationship. Vajpayee had been enjoying the glow of a growing friendship with the U.S. Washington liked the way he reined in his party's hotheads and diluted its hard-line agenda, and admired his skill at holding together his fractious coalition for an unprecedented three years. He had almost persuaded the U.S. to blacklist Pakistan as a terrorist state for supporting the Kashmir jihadis, while practicing admirable restraint by not retaliating directly against Pakistan.