The prime minister’s residence in Islamabad, in the shadow of the Maargala Hills, has a panoramic view of the Rawal dam, its edges lined with houses in Rawalpindi. From the portico, a flight of stairs leads to a rich hallway, opening on the left to two large, ornate drawing rooms. The appointment with Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali has been arranged for 12 noon.I am feeling a little disoriented because the script I had carried in my mind from New Delhi has been altered somewhat by the sheer fatigue of travel — over three hours from Delhi to Dubai, a six hour wait at Dubai and another three hours to Islamabad. Upon arrival, I first call up Riaz Khokar, foreign secretary, the key person in arranging the interview. ‘‘Partner’’, he exclaims in his characteristic style. ‘‘I am having to leave for Europe tomorrow morning at 10 AM.’’ A pause. ‘‘Maybe we can have a sandwich breakfast at the foreign office.’’In the hot house atmosphere of Indo-Pak relations, players, would-be-players and obsessive busybodies are generally identified as hawks, doves and dove-nosed-hawks. It is also a peculiarity of Indo-Pak equations that to be a hawk at the operational level is some sort of a guarantor for durability in relevant slots that come into play between the two countries. In the general atmosphere of mistrust in which relations have proceeded over the past fifty years, the hawk, on both sides of the border, has been found to be more trustworthy to protect the national interest while the politician is otherwise preoccupied. The sheer drill of coping with each other has over time transformed the two foreign offices into aviaries where even doves carry hooked beaks for survival.In this framework, where would you place Riaz Khokar? I knew him socially as Pakistan’s high commissioner but never really grappled with him as a hawk or a dove since I have always found the world at large much more engaging than the suffocating confine of the Indo-Pak alley. Once he played a key role in my life when, along with friends from our foreign office we performed the impossible task of crossing over into Pakistan over the Wagah land route to be able to watch the cricket World Cup final in Lahore! The Pakistani interior ministry placed such hurdles in our way that all of us contrived hospitality for two days and nights with our Border Security Force, even as a harassed Khokar shuttled back and forth from Lahore to cheer us up. Finally, he succeeded. We did watch the match. But from this incident who emerges as the hawk? Khokar or the Interior Ministry?However, as I enter the foreign office, I am all too conscious of the fact that Khokar, by universal consent, on both sides of the border, carries over his head the halo of a hawk. ‘‘Partner, you may think I am a hawk, but I can tell you the stars are in a favourable configuration and this peace process can go very far’’. Then, after a pause, ‘‘In selecting Shivshankar Menon as the high commissioner you are sending us the very best.’’Khokar does not reveal to me the name of Pakistan’s high commissioner to India. He says a panel of four officers has been sent for clearance. I learn that Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri and the official spokesman are also out of the country. In other words, the name of Pakistan’s high commissioner will not be known until Kasuri and Khokar return in about a week.This is playing on my mind as I ask prime minister Jamali why he was delaying naming Pakistan’s man in Delhi. ‘‘Four generations of distinguished diplomats in Menon’s family’’ he says with obvious delight. Then, with almost innocent joy, he volunteers the name of Riaz Mohammed Khan, Ambassador to Beijing, as the new man to be sent to New Delhi.Jamali is a big, burly man with trusting eyes. He even indulges in a bit of nostalgia. Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor, Dev Anand, Madhubala and Nargis were such a craze in his student days that ‘‘we used to travel to Kandahar to watch Indian movies, sometimes two a day.’’ In attendance during the hour long conversation are Pakistan’s Information Secretary, Anwar Mehmood and Rai Riaz, Press Secretary to Jamali. A PTV cameraman has been called in to ‘‘record’’ the interview for the archives.At 5 pm I receive a call from Anwar Mehmood. ‘‘Some foreign agencies have asked if the high commissioner to New Delhi has been named.’’ He should try and preserve the sanctity of my scoop, I request. He says he may not be able to stop local journalists from publishing the news. He is in an awkward situation since neither the foreign minister nor the foreign secretary are in the country. PTV carries the news that evening. The news reaches Kasuri and Khokar in different time zones. If Kasuri intended to amend the appointment, it is too late. A foreign office conditioned by the tradition of making such announcements only after intimating the host country, finds itself out of sync with Jamali’s homespun style. The media get a juicy story which, by the extent of its currency, may have alerted interests who have other names up their sleeve for the plum job.
