NEW DELHI, India - Amid fresh shelling along the India-Pakistan border and a steady exodus of foreigners fearing a war, the leaders of the two countries departed for a regional security summit yesterday with little chance that they will meet to talk peace.
Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said "there is no such plan" for him to meet with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf at a summit of Central Asian leaders in Almaty, Kazakhstan, that begins today.
Russian President Vladimir V. Putin plans to meet separately with Vajpayee and Musharraf at the summit of 16 countries and hopes to persuade them to talk. On a stopover in Tajikistan en route to the summit yesterday, Musharraf was optimistic that Russia, a traditional ally of India, could nudge India toward dialogue.
Vajpayee, however, insists that the two sides have nothing to talk about until Musharraf stops what India calls "cross-border terrorism" in Kashmir. New Delhi says that the Pakistani military supports guerrillas who cross into areas of the disputed Himalayan territory controlled by India.
Musharraf says he has cracked down on militants, but the United States and other Western governments are demanding more action to ease tensions between the two nuclear-armed rivals.
Vajpayee, a Hindu poet, and Musharraf, a Muslim paratrooper, never had much chance to bond at a three-day summit in the Indian city of Agra in July. But they were talking for the first time since 1999, when Musharraf, as head of the Pakistani army, directed an incursion into Kargil, in Indian-held territory, that brought the region to the brink of war.
The heavy fighting left hundreds of soldiers and civilians dead. At the time, Pakistan claimed the attack was carried out by guerrilla fighters, not regular army troops. Kargil created bad blood between Vajpayee and Musharraf, who later seized power in a bloodless coup.
Nevertheless, Vajpayee defied hard-liners in his government and agreed to Musharraf's request for talks at Agra without an agenda. Bureaucrats and diplomats usually use negotiated limits on what can be discussed as leashes on leaders when they sit down to deal with disputes as entrenched as Kashmir.
Musharraf, who was born in New Delhi but fled in 1947 to newly created Pakistan with his family, visited his ancestral home before the Agra summit. The open welcome he received raised hopes of a breakthrough.
Officials at the Agra talks reported that they were going well, without giving specifics. Rumors started that a landmark deal might be in the works.
As the final day of talks was set to start, Musharraf spoke to Indian news editors at a breakfast session. His remarks were supposed to be off the record, but an Indian satellite news network aired a videotape. It showed Musharraf saying Pakistanis didn't trust India's government and thought that it was stonewalling in the hope that the Kashmir dispute would go away.
With every tough line Musharraf delivered, the prospects of any deal with Vajpayee disintegrated. The two leaders couldn't even agree to a brief statement that they were willing to sign. Indian pundits quickly attacked Vajpayee and his closest lieutenants for letting Musharraf win the media battle by making the Indian delegation seem aloof and unwilling to compromise.
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld will visit the region this week and hopes to get Vajpayee and Musharraf to start talking peace again. But he will have to find a way to crack the wall of distrust cemented at Agra.
Local newspapers and magazines are full of doomsday scenarios. The cover of India Today, the country's leading newsmagazine, features a photo montage of terrified people fleeing a nuclear mushroom cloud rising behind the India Gate arch, a New Delhi landmark.
A graphic that runs over two inside pages shows many of the capital's main government buildings crumbling and burning. It offers this timeline of a nuclear blast:
"5 secs: 200,000 people will die instantly at ground zero," it says.
"10 secs: Blast wave will destroy buildings in 10 km radius.
"5 hrs: 300,000 people will be injured, half of them severely.
"10 hours: India's retaliation will destroy all cities in Pakistan."
Sandwiched between pages of the potential nuclear war coverage is a recruitment ad for the Indian army. "Be an army man," it says. "Be a winner for life."
India and Pakistan say nuclear war is unthinkable, but neither has been able to lead the way out of an escalating confrontation that began in December when terrorists attacked India's parliament complex.
Paul Watson is a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, a Tribune Publishing newspaper.