Prime Minister A B Vajpayee knows better than most of us that the path to peace -- the high road to peace, as he said in his missive to Pakistan’s chief executive -- is more treacherous than Mumbai’s roads in the monsoon. If he has consented to take this perilous passage despite such knowledge, it is obvious that his calculations go deeper than what is being believed in most circles.

Before trying to analyse what the gambit could be, let us remove the certainties out of the way.

For one, it was the nudge from the US that pushed the Indian government on the road to a dialogue, after holding out the pet line that there could be no talks with a military ruler who was not elected by the people. Of course, Washington had a role to play in this sudden change of heart, a change of heart so fundamental in the nation’s policy that can be likened perhaps to the socialist nation embracing economic laissez faire in 1991.

rest of the article is at http://www.rediff.com/news/2001/jun/06sai.htm

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