NEW DELHI, OCT 23: Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif hain?'' asked the personal assistant to Prime Minister Vajpayee, over the phone to Karachi. ``Jee haan, aap dus minute mein rafta kayam karen,'' (He is here, please call back after ten minutes) came the reply.Some ten minutes later, around 7.30 pm IST on Tuesday, the first telephone connection between the Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan was established. When the history of leadership minutiae is written, we'll know who said what and in what sequence to each other. But till then, we'll have to suffice with the knowledge that the call was made over an ordinary international, though presumably secure, line from the PM's house located on Race Course Road to Karachi where Sharif was then camping.The Delhi-Islamabad hotline was given a short shrift now not because it was `dead', but simply because Sharif was beyond Islamabad's range. ``The alternative would have been to use a local patch from Islamabad to Karachi, but that was deemed toocomplicated. So we dialled Karachi directly,'' explained an official.Vajpayee and Sharif made politically correct conversation ``expressing satisfaction'' over last week's reactivated foreign secretary-level dialogue in a language laden with historical meaning: neither Hindi nor Urdu, but Hindustani. Almost as if the world's newest nuclear countries were hoping for future miracles to emerge out of a shared past.A craving to be part of the same history was obviously on top of former prime minister I K Gujral's mind last year, when he had picked up the ``hotline'' to Pakistan on the morning of June 19, 1997, to talk to Sharif about the foreign secretary-level talks that were to begin later that day. The cobwebs had been dusted off the hotline for that particular call.Mindful of his passion for Urdu poets and their poetry and desperate to imbue significance into his call, Gujral launched into a line from Magaz: ``Guftagu band na ho, baat se baat chale.'' It was a line that was to turn sour onlythree months later when the bilateral dialogue broke down over differences in how to conduct official conversation.That call also bespoke volumes about the two leaders. Apart from the fact that it was in Urdu, one source who listened in said Sharif warmly thanked Gujral for sending a basket each of mangoes to himself and his father.The telephone line between India and Pakistan, dedicated or otherwise, has been witness to the subcontinent's tortured history. In the Ministry of External Affairs, old hands throw back their heads in recall, wondering when the ``hotline'' was first activated. Perhaps it was after the 1971 war.At any rate the Director Generals of Military Operations (DGMOs) from both sides first agreed to convert a weekly call at noon on Tuesday into a confidence-building measure from January 1, 1991. They have persisted over the last eight years, through storms and good weather, informing each other about activity on the ground, on the Line of Control as well as other operations.APM-to-PM ``secure and dedicated'' line between Delhi and Islamabad was really established after Gujral warmly embraced Sharif at the last SAARC Summit in Male. Subsequently, they used the hotline three times. Elections in India early this year effectively put an end to that dialogue.Contrary to public perception, life beyond the Indo-Pakistan hotline does exist - in the form of another dedicated exchange between the PM's house in the Capital and the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia. It's a bit like the movies: When you pick up the phone at one end, it blinks/rings on the other. The difference is that in Moscow they speak Russian, it's only the interpreters who speak English.Sources explained that the ``hotline'' is more than just a line that is never engaged. ``You have to set up procedures, decide how to operate in different formats and `clean' all the attachments that are attached to the telephone exchange,'' said one source. ``It implies a preparedness on either side to react and ensures very quick contactat the highest level in a very secure manner,'' he added.Unlike the subcontinental version, India and Russia actually signed an agreement to instal a ``hotline'' between the two countries in late 1995. They activated the phone for the first time on April 13 this year, when Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Vajpayee congratulated each other on 50 years of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and India.The ``bhai-bhai'' relationship was witness to some strain after India went nuclear in May. Vajpayee used the secure line to explain India's position to Yeltsin - and hoped he would enlist Moscow's support to prevent the brickbatting of India in ensuing meetings between the permanent five nuclear powers. He succeeded. Moscow and Paris refused to allow subsequent P-5 moves to impose concerted sanctions against India.
