Premiers of India, Pakistan Start Historic Peace Talks

A golden bus crossed from India to Pakistan on Saturday bearing an old rival and the hopes of a subcontinent tired of war.

Prime Minster Atal Behari Vajpayee rode in from India to meet his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif, spurring talk that a new trans-border bus route could open an era of friendliness between their historically hostile countries.

Vajpayee and Sharif planned two days of meetings aimed at bridging the differences between the world’s two newest nuclear-armed states. The Indian prime minister’s foray across the border unfolded amid a flurry of pageantry and pomp, which turned an ordinarily hostile border post into a platform for peacemaking.

Pakistan’s turbaned border guards threw open Wagha’s iron gates, a band began to play, and the two prime ministers embraced as Vajpayee stepped onto Pakistani soil.

“I bring the goodwill and hopes of my fellow Indians,” Vajpayee told a crowd. “Together let us make a new beginning.”

Then the two men, whose impoverished countries make up a fifth of the world’s population, strolled together on a red carpet to a helicopter that carried them to the nearby city of Lahore.

The two-day summit marks a hopeful turn in relations between India and Pakistan, carved along religious lines from the British Empire 51 years ago.

The Partition, as it is known here, killed a million people and forced 10 million from their homes. Since then, the two countries--predominantly Muslim Pakistan and mostly Hindu India--have fought three wars. Their troops still kill one another regularly along a disputed border in the Kashmir region.

What was a conflict little known outside Asia catapulted onto the international scene last May when India carried out five underground nuclear explosions. Pakistan followed with tests of its own, and South Asia suddenly became one of the world’s most likely nuclear battlefields.

The United States and other countries slapped economic sanctions on India and Pakistan, and both have come under intense pressure to settle their differences.

Few people in either country expect that to happen this weekend.

Indian and Pakistani politicians, working to keep expectations low, say it is miracle enough that the two sides are talking at all.

No Indian leader has visited Pakistan in 10 years. Before Saturday, Vajpayee and Sharif had managed only two brief meetings, the first of which--in Sri Lanka last July--broke off amid icy glares.

“We are not shooting at each other, we are not shouting at each other,” Pakistani Information Minister Mushahid Hussain said. “That’s success.”

The wellspring of the conflict between India and Pakistan is the disputed region of Kashmir, a predominantly Muslim region that spans both countries in the Himalayas. Both India and Pakistan claim Kashmir, and their soldiers face off along a 450-mile border dubbed the Line of Control.

Pakistan supports an armed insurgency in Kashmir, and the Indian army brutally represses it. More than 10,000 people have died in the past decade.

The two sides often bombard each other along the Line of Control--prompting fears that the conflict over Kashmir could escalate into nuclear war.

On Saturday, 11 Hindu villagers were killed in Indian Kashmir when gunmen opened fire in two villages in apparently separate incidents.

Public opinion in both India and Pakistan seems firmly opposed to giving ground on Kashmir. Previous talks have broken down largely because Pakistan has insisted that the Kashmir issue be resolved before other issues can be addressed.

This time around, Vajpayee and Sharif say they are willing to address a wide range of topics.

Sources on both sides say the two leaders may agree to skirt Kashmir for now--and settle on limited agreements to decrease the likelihood of war.

The Delhi-to-Lahore bus route, inaugurated Saturday by Vajpayee, stands as a model.

On the streets of Lahore, the passion for Kashmir--and the memories of the Partition--still smolder.

Crowds gathered in several spots Saturday, chanting slogans and burning tires. One throng chased away a caravan of visiting ambassadors with volleys of stones.

Mati Ullah Batt, a 72-year-old carpet maker, recalled 50-year-old memories of Muslim babies skewered on the swords of Hindus. A Muslim and a native of India, Batt fled to Pakistan with nine of his family members. Forty-five others died.

“I saw these things with my own eyes,” Batt said. “Peace between India and Pakistan is impossible.”

Malik Mahmood, a shopkeeper in Lahore’s Gawalmandi neighborhood, used a slur in referring to India’s Hindus as nonbelievers doomed to hell.

Yet like many Pakistanis, Mahmood watches every Indian movie that he can. He says he especially likes Juhi Chawala, a popular Indian actress.

Sure, Mahmood said, the Pakistanis might have to fight the Indians over Kashmir one day. Yet if that happened, Mahmood said, he would hope that nothing happened to Chawala, his favorite actress.

“I like her,” Mahmood said, “as a human being.”