When Kim Jong-un and his South Asian counterpart Moon Jae-in met in Seoul, the world watched with rapt attention. It was first time that a North Korean leader had set foot in the South and outlined a vision of peace and dismantling of nuclear weapons from the peninsula. The conflict in peninsula which began with the Korean War from 1950-53 is one of the last of the vestiges of the Cold War in the world.
South and North Korea confirmed the common goal of realizing, through complete denuclearization, a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula, read a statement signed by North Koreas leader, Kim Jong-un, and the Souths president, Moon Jae-in, after their meeting at the border village of Panmunjom. The summit meeting was broadcast live across the world. And its outcome has been welcomed. But in South Asia, this extraordinary development has also attracted interest for different reasons. It has generated an intense media debate about its relevance for India and Pakistan. Could it be that the two countries would also replicate a similar normalization in their relationship? It looks like a distant proposition but not an improbable one. Though in past, there have been promising attempts to make peace, all of them have fallen apart. One such effort was led by the former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and his then Pakistani counterpart Parvez Musharraf. The process was later carried forward by Musharraf and the Vajpayees successor Manmohan Singh. And the two worked on what became known as the four-point formula for Kashmir resolution. These proposals unveiled in 2006 set out a four-step incremental process for Kashmir resolution. The steps included identification of the regions in Kashmir for the solution, demilitarization, self-governance and a joint management or a consultative mechanism between India and Pakistan on the state.
But the process ended up nowhere, and was abandoned after Musharrafs sudden exit from the scene following lawyers agitation in the country. But ever since, situation has gone downhill. And the emergence of a Hindu nationalist government in New Delhi has further narrowed the chances of a rapprochement. This has made the friendship between the two countries ideologically unsustainable. Besides, there are longstanding structural factors that work against a detente, some fundamental differences that has put them on opposite nation building trajectories. But many of such factors also existed between two Koreas. And it took a statesmanly initiative by their respective leaders to overcome it. Do India, Pakistan leaders have it in them to embark on such a challenging but promising course? It looks unlikely. For that to happen, the dialogue cant be only about the management of the differences but their resolution. And that seems unlikely to happen. More so now when the two countries are looking forward to their respective national elections. But South Asia and the world would be a far better place if the two countries could come together.
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