India indicated Monday that its patience had been stretched taut, when it rejected Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's repeated refrain that there was no point in talks with India if Kashmir was not the core issue.
"We're not refusing to talk about Kashmir. But the dialogue has to be comprehensive. Pakistan might have opted for religion as the basis of its creation, but for India, Kashmir is the symbol of the unity of the country. It is not a religious issue. We're prepared to talk about it. But there can be no compromise on India's unity and integrity," Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said at the all party meeting on the Musharraf visit today.
The government has decided to field foreign minister Jaswant Singh to counter Pakistani propaganda like the role of Indian security forces in Kashmir and the reported decision of the Pakistani High Commissioner to invite the Hurriyat leaders to meet Musharraf.
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Singh will, tomorrow, in an interview to Doordarshan, issue a sharp response to Pakistan's incendiary statements.
This interview will also serve as the agenda note on issues that India thinks it should discuss with Pakistan.
India would not shy away from a discussion on Kashmir, but would also like to talk about cross-border terrorism, trade and economic relations, consular issues and more people to people contact, Vajpayee told the all party meeting.
Mulayam Singh Yadav of Samajwadi Party and P A Sangma of the National Democratic Party were aggressive on the issue of Musharraf's proposed meeting with Hurriyat leaders.
They said that if Musharraf was going to hold talks with the Hurriyat leaders, Sangma and Yadav would boycott the meeting.
Although Congress leader Sonia Gandhi was silent on this proposal, it was endorsed by the others. Yadav also wanted the government to stay away from the meeting.
While it was left to the external affairs ministry to decide, it was decided that bare minimum protocol would be observed by the Indian government if Pakistan persisted in meeting the Hurriyat leaders.
Muslim League leader G M Banatwala was the only leader at the all party meeting who, while showering high praise on Vajpayee for his initiative, said that the Hurriyat issue should not be allowed to fog up the entire summit.
The government's anguish on the issue was communicated in no uncertain terms by home minister L K Advani when Pakistan high commissioner Ashraf Jehangir Qazi called on him on Saturday.
"You have queered the pitch for the summit," Advani was quoted by sources as having told Qazi during their one-on-one meeting.
The opposition leaders, according to Pramod Mahajan who briefed the press, told the Prime Minister to view the talks with Musharraf in the context of the Indian constitution, the Shimla Agreement and the Lahore Declaration.
The leaders of the opposition parties also said that one summit should not be expected to resolve all outstanding issues and therefore, asked for a mechanism that would allow them to meet again - in other words, view the summit as process-oriented, not result-oriented.
According to Jaswant Singh, the issues which will be taken up at the summit meeting will be:
1: nuclear confidence building measures
2: a no-war pact which takes into account cross-border terrorism, proxy war and terrorism in the definition of war
3: the issue of Indian prisoners of war in Pakistan.
4: the status of gurdwaras and mandirs in Pakistan.
To a Pakistani suggestion that India reduce its security presence in Kashmir, Singh said that it was the sovereign right of India to deploy security forces as it thought fit.