TITLE: Neither a Hawk nor a Dove
An Insider’s Account of Pakistan’s Foreign Policy
Author: Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri
Publisher: Penguin/Viking
Pgs: 852
This book presents a perspective of India-Pak relations as seen by Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri as foreign minister of the land of pure. The book could have gone through a good blue pencil to make the reading less tedious. This is not to say that Kasuri doesn’t live up to the expectations though not fully at least to substantial extent. He asserts that whenever India and Pakistan seek to improve bilateral relations they will have to pick up the framework formulated during his tenure at the Foreign Office, well, is a boastful claim, notwithstanding his rich anecdotal accounts. The jury is still out.
As Pakistan foreign minister, Kasuri had interacted with Indian counterparts, Pranab Mukherjee, K Natwar Singh and Yashwant Sinha. He gives an account of these interactions. It was his account, though frank, by all means. There is very little about his master of the day, Gen Pervez Musharraf, who had seized power in a bloodless coup and went out of power after lawyers’ led demonstrations shook his edifice.
Kasuri focuses on ‘fissures’ in India-Pakistan relations, which surface through gaps at the people-to-people level, and makes out a strong case for a shift to dialogue on rational terms. Same line he takes even on Kashmir lamenting that the old thinking is taking Pakistan nowhere. He comes out as a strong advocate against the ‘non-state actors’, who have derailed India-Pak dialogue one too many times. And will not hesitate to repeat their act again and again.