Seesaw

With the shrewd instinct of the paratrooper that he was early in his military career, Musharraf repeatedly attempted during his time in office to land in ...

As then Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani went to Washington where he had the reputation of a hardliner in case of Pakistan, who had wrecked the peace talks with Musharraf in Agra, even undercutting then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Rice asked him to go easy on Musharraf after the Pakistan-orchestrated terrorist attack on India’s Parliament on December 13, 2001. That is what differentiates Pakistan from the rest of South Asia with the exception of Bangladesh. He was Pakistan’s Foreign Secretary with one of the longest tenures in that office — from 1990 to 1994. More often than not, cricket was an excuse and diplomacy was at the centre of his thinking whenever he expressed a desire to watch cricket in India. Many Indians put aside their animosity to the mastermind of the Kargil invasion and Musharraf’s image as a liberal got a boost. He lost no opportunity to ferret out ways into the hearts of his interlocutors.