Peace Agreement at Tashkent

A South Asian peace conference was held in January 1966 at Tashkent (the capital of Uzbekistan, then one of the republics of the Soviet Union) which was sponsored by the Soviet President, Alexei Kosygin. It was with the mediation of Kosygin that President Ayub Khan of Pakistan and Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri of India met and signed the Tashkent Declaration on January 10, 1966 to “restore normal and peaceful relations between their countries and to promote understanding and friendly relations between their peoples”. The Tashkent Declaration was meant to form a framework for lasting peace between India and Pakistan. It is believed that the two sides were not able to reach an agreement on their own and that they were compelled by the Soviet leaders to sign a draft that they had prepared. However, it did not meet with complete approval in India. Critics felt that the agreement should have but did not include a no-war pact, nor was there any provision that Pakistan should give up guerrilla aggression in Kashmir. In Pakistan, the agreement was received even more angrily: there were riots and demonstrations against it. Zulfikar Bhutto distanced himself from Ayub Khan and the pact, and in the end broke away

to subsequently form his own political party.