IT took India and Pakistan 25 years to reach the Simla Agreement. It has taken them another 27 years to discuss how (or how not) to implement that agreement. Yes, 27 long years, and all in vain. In the meantime, those born in 1947 have grown to middle age, while those who were then middle aged have all died. May be, not all but most of them, anyway. In the meantime an entire new generation has come of age which has no idea at all what that famous agreement was all about. That is the sort of games diplomats play.

Now, after all these years, Lahore has come as a big opportunity. What A B Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif make of it will show what the two countries are going to make of the decades that lie ahead of them. Nawaz Sharif has so far shown both the will and the willingness to make a move forward. True, that much of what Pakistan has done all these 27 years has been contrary to the Simla Agreement but it is also equally true that much of what Nawaz Sharif has proposed for Lahore is fairly consistent with that accord. The Simla Agreement had in one section proposed several steps to normalise relations between the two countries and in another committed them both to work for a final settlement of the Jammu and Kashmir problem. The diplomats of India and Pakistan have all these years done nothing but wrangle over what should come first — normalisation of relations or discussion on Kashmir. "No Kashmir without normalisation," say the Indian diplomats. "No normalisation without Kashmir first, say their Pakistan counterparts.

Now it has become clear to both India and Pakistan that, left to themselves, their diplomats will keep wrangling endlessly, year after year, decade after decade, and generation after generation. It must be such a realisation which must have impelled Sharif to propose to Vajpayee to talk directly, keeping out both diplomats and intermediaries from vitiating the meeting of the two minds. And, it must have been a similar realisation on part of Vajpayee which must have driven him to offer to take the first bus to Lahore in 52 years. Well, the diplomats of the two countries have so far tried to reach big decisions by first sorting out the details, and failed miserably in their endeavour. Now is the time for Vajpayee and Sharif to try another way round, that is, take the big decision first and leave the details to work themselves out.

It is clear that this can be done only at the highest political level. Sharif and Vajpayee can do that in their one-to-one talks. They can take the big decision because there is only one big decision to be taken. They can even discuss how they can assist each other in making that big decision acceptable to each other's people and Parliaments by agreeing to a fair give-and-take to straighten the line of dispute. They can even go a step further and also discuss how to do it all without causing each other a loss of face in case any give or take they agree on is interpreted as a climb-down for one or the other or for both of them.