Keep his counsel?_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Keep his counsel?

1. P. N. HAKSAR was an intellectual powerhouse and one of India’s most successful strategists who astutely established the political omnipotence of a weak prime minister, Indira Gandhi, through populist measures in the Sixties and early Seventies. He also served as ambassador to several countries and was one of India’s few remaining Cold Warriors and die-hard socialists, instrumental in negotiating a timely military pact with the Soviet Union before the third war with neighbouring Pakistan in 1971, to counter any interference by its ally, the United States.

As principal secretary to Indira Gandhi and India’s most powerful civil servant, Haksar played a major role in negotiating the 1972 Shimla Accord with Pakistan after the war that led to the breakaway East Pakistan becoming Bangladesh. His closeness to Gandhi made Haksar perhaps the only man privy to the secret negotiations concluded between her and the Pakistani prime minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto over the disputed northern province of Kashmir. It remains one of the world’s most volatile flashpoints, where armed Muslim separatists have been waging a civil war for an Islamic homeland since 1989 that has claimed nearly 20,000 lives.

The secret deal that led to the Shimla Accord after Pakistan was defeated and with over 90,000 prisoners of war in Indian hands remains a mystery. When all negotiations between the two antagonists had broken down Gandhi and Bhutto decided to make one last attempt to break the impasse by meeting without aides. It is widely believed that only Haksar knew what transpired between the two that eventually led to the Shima Accord which also agreed to resolve the Kashmir dispute bilaterally. But he kept his counsel, revealing nothing despite severe provocation in recent years.