Political leaders seldom concede failure. One has to look no further than the mess in Iraq to see this. But in a less spectacular way, this is also true of the leaders of Pakistan and India. For behind the polite assurances of goodwill and scheduling of further meetings, the India-Pakistan peace initiative is now dead in the water.

The high point of the initiative was reached when prime minister Manmohan Singh met president Musharraf in New York in September. Dr Singh assured Gen. Musharraf that India would consider virtually any solution that did not involve a redrawing of boundaries in Kashmir. He apparently explained that a change of boundaries would amount to a second partition of the country on religious lines and could easily upset the social balance in the country. Gen. Musharraf apparently promised to get back to him with concrete suggestions. Both emerged looking relaxed and relieved.

Since then, however, things have gone steadily downhill. Prior to foreign minister Kasuri's visit in early October, India submitted a 72-point agenda for confidence building. A little later this was pared down to 30 points. Pakistan agreed to examine the proposals, but has not responded to them, till this day.

Despite the bonhomie in New York, foreign minister Kasuri's visit also did not do much to unfreeze the deadlock over Kashmir Pakistan foreign secretary Riaz Khokar, who preceded Kasuri by a few days, met Hurriyat leaders from both camps and others from Kashmir in Delhi, and briefed Kasuri that many of them were adamantly opposed to the bus link between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad because any such 'concession' would reduce alienation in Kashmir and would therefore strengthen the case for a settlement based upon the status quo.

Khokar was repeating only what one leader, Ali Shah Geelani, said and seemed to have underplayed the strong endorsement of the move by other Hurriyat leaders. But the reasoning Geelani gave, resonated strongly among the hawks in the Pakistani establishment.

The foreign ministers' meeting did however lead to a further easing of visa restrictions, an agreement to increase the number of crossing points and perhaps most promising of all, an agreement by India in principle to share a gas pipeline from Iran with Pakistan. But that was where meaningful progress stopped, and distrust and misunderstanding took over.

The first occasion was when Gen Musharraf floated a trial balloon at an iftar party on October 25, that India and Pakistan could agree to identify some disputed parts of the two Kashmirs, and put them under joint control or under the UN. This created ripples of unease in India that compelled Dr Singh to remind Gen Musharraf of what he had said in New York.

But the Indian reaction was a pale shadow of the storm that broke on Gen Musharraf's head in Pakistan. Not only was his proposal rejected by the Jamaat-i-Islami and various Jihadi factions in Muzaffarabad, but also by the Muslim league and other democratic parties. Not surprisingly, speaking to Indian journalists in Lahore, he promptly hardened his stand.

During his visit to India on November 23-24 Pakistan's prime minister Shaukat Aziz smoothed ruffled feathers in New Delhi, by making it clear that he had not come with any concrete proposals on Kashmir, and that Gen Musharraf had been speaking informally, to a Pakistani audience in order to get a feedback. Apart from SAARC issues he confined the larger part of his discussions to promoting closer economic relations between the two countries. In particular he made it clear that Pakistan would welcome Indian participation in the gas pipeline project, although it was prepared to go it alone if India decided to stay out.

This visit too produced little more than an agreement to keep talking. India wanted Pakistan to offer 'most favoured nation' treatment to Indian exports, in exchange for participating in the pipeline project. It later reduced its demand to being allowed transit access for Indian goods to Afghanistan through Wagah and Lahore. But Aziz dug his heels in and insisted that the pipeline project had to be a stand alone project, while the other issues were a part of the composite dialogue.

India and Pakistan have also failed to come to an agreement in the opening of the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road. India agreed that there would be no need for visas and that an entry permit on a separate paper would suffice, but insisted that this should be accompanied by a passport, as proof of identification. It also insisted that the road should be open to use by non-Kashmiris from both countries who had the necessary visas, as in practice, on the Pakistani side in particular it was very difficult to distinguish a Kashmiri resident of POK from a Pathan, Punjabi or Baluchi.

Pakistan, however, was adamant that passports should not be used and that a certificate from the district magistrate should suffice as it used to before 1953. It also wants the use of the road to be limited to Kashmiris.

The final roadblock was hit by the working group on confidence building measures in non-nuclear security issues on December 15, when Pakistan turned down nine proposals made by the Indian side in June, and raised instead a demand that the two countries should move towards parity in military strength - a move that would require disbanding nearly half of the Indian army. With this, for the moment at least, the last vestiges of forward momentum have petered out.

When a process in which the people of two countries have invested a great deal of hope totters, it is customary for each side to blame the other. The present impasse has proved no exception. Behind a veil of polite good cheer, the air is thick with accusations of bad faith. Pakistanis remain convinced, perhaps more than ever, that India is only paying lip service to the idea of a composite dialogue, and that everything its officials are actually doing is part of an attempt to isolate Kashmir from other issues, resolve the latter and thereby create conditions for an acceptance of the status quo in Kashmir, perhaps with cosmetic changes.

Indian officials are equally convinced that Pakistan is not prepared to allow other elements of the composite dialogue to progress until they have wrested some concrete concessions on Kashmir. They are convinced that Pakistan has decided to stall the bus route proposal at any cost.

Finally, they justify their insistence upon linking land transit rights to Afghanistan with the gas pipeline, because although Pakistan claims it has given free access to Afghanistan via Karachi and Quetta, Indian goods destined for Afghanistan inexplicably take upto eight months just to clear Karachi port. As a result, virtually everything India is sending to Afghanistan is going through the Persian port of Bandar Abbas and Herat.

There is an element of truth in all these allegations, but it is dwarfed by each side's inability, or unwillingness, to understand and accept the limitations under which the other must operate. A crucial example was Delhi's failure to see Musharraf's iftar proposal through his eyes.

From the Pakistani point of view, his suggestion that a Muslim majority part of Kashmir could be separated from the rest but did not necessarily have to become part of Pakistan amounted to a repudiation of the ideological basis of that country's claim to Kashmir - the belief that Pakistan will remain incomplete if the Muslim majority part of Kashmir does not become a part of it. It is no wonder that Musharraf was roundly abused by the Jamaat-e-Islami and other religious organisations in Pakistan.

By the same token Pakistani negotiators find it very difficult to understand that it is Delhi's concern for the safety and well-being of India's large Muslim population that makes it reject any solution that looks like another partition based on religion. Had Musharraf been more sensitive to this, he would not have sent up his trial balloon at the iftar function, without at least forewarning Delhi of his intentions.

This incomprehension apart, the slow grinding down of negotiations shows how deeply ingrained is the mistrust that separates the two countries. At the level of civil servants this should not be surprising for it is their job to examine every possible consequence of an action and guard against it.

But this mentality effectively precludes making that leap of imagination or trust without which deadlocks cannot be broken. That can only come from the heads of state of government. The time has therefore come for this 'dialogue' to move back to the highest level or government. However ineptly he may have done it, Musharraf made his break with the past at the iftar dinner on October 25. The ball is therefore in Dr. Manmohan Singh's court.

* The author, a noted analyst and commentator, is a former editor of the Hindustan Times, The Economic Times and The Financial Express, and a former information adviser to the prime minister of India. He is the author of several books including, The Perilous Road to the Market: The Political Economy of Reform in Russia, India and China, and Kashmir 1947: The Origins of a Dispute, and a regular columnist with several leading publications.