Bill Clinton was telling a story, something he does almost as well as he runs a government. We were at Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's table. The former American President had paused in Delhi during a world tour on work related to his personal foundation, and Mr Vajpayee had invited him to lunch as his personal guest. Clinton looked like a man in a virtuous cycle. He was trim and fit, but perhaps retirement begins to age a politician before his time. His appetite however had not aged, and he expressed his doubts about his ability to protect his new weight with so much Indian food around. Bukhara at the Maurya remains his preferred means of waist-expansion. Talk drifted between Indian food (excellent) and American jazz (even better). Then the conversation turned to war and peace.

Clinton the Polite was instantly transformed into Clinton the President. He was reluctant to criticise his country on as sensitive a matter as Iraq, but his analysis was cool without sounding partisan. He thought that George Bush had made a mistake by not giving Hans Blix and his UN inspection team more time. He appreciated Bush's difficulty, once American forces had been mobilised on the borders of Iraq. You could not keep an Army ready for war and then walk away from war: America's reputation would have been dented beyond repair.

Iraq led to Palestine; and we inevitably reached the genesis of the present phase of conflict -- when Clinton's dream of peace between Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak collapsed in the twilight of his resplendent presidency. The battles, of terror and politics, resumed with unprecedented ferocity.

Dayan, Clinton said, was a genius because of 1967. Not because he won that war, although that was brilliant enough, but because he had the courage to think about the peace. Moshe Dayan stopped his triumphant troops from raising their flag of victory on the Temple Mount. You have defeated the enemy, Dayan told his soldiers, but you have no right to humiliate them. Clinton's face, urgent and animated in admiration for Dayan, turned sombre as he recalled another Israeli general, Ariel Sharon, who, three decades later, deliberately crossed this line of wisdom in search of right-wing votes. Barak was Prime Minister then, and under political pressure from a surging Sharon who attacked the peace efforts predictably, describing them as "sell-out". Sharon wanted to provoke the Arabs and mobilise Israeli hardliners behind him. Clinton advised Barak to stop Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount. Barak replied that he could not legally do so, and persuasion was beyond his capabilities.

A mixture of regret and excitement filled Clinton's voice as he recalled his next suggestion to Barak. First, ensure that there are enough policemen to prevent any violence. Then ask a young Palestinian girl, alone, to wait for Sharon with a bouquet of flowers in her hand. She should give him the flowers, and add one sentence: "You are most welcome to come here every day when there is peace."

That single image, Clinton believes, would have etched a place in the heart of the region and the mind of the world; it would have defined the future.

Was America's extraordinary President being naïve? Had his deep conviction in peace blurred harsher truths?

No. Clinton understood what mapmakers and wall-builders do not; that peace, like love, first begins in the heart. Only then does it start to search for statistics, arguments and a saleable rationale. As I heard him describe what might have been I could feel my own emotions stir at such a simple, beautiful and powerful image. It was an idea of pure genius, typical of a man who had sought the impossible in his own life -- and found it.

Yasser Arafat phoned Clinton when he was leaving office to congratulate him on having been such a successful President. "I told him (Arafat)," said Clinton, "that I had become a failure -- and that he had had turned me into a failure." That failure saddens Clinton, of course, but it also puzzles him. It was a done deal, bar some shouting about the Armenian quarter. Barak had agreed to give 97 per cent of the land claimed by the Palestinians, and compensation from Israel territory for the remaining 3 per cent. There was agreement over the number of refugees who could return. Was water the problem, I asked. Clinton shook his head; such technicalities would have been easily solved, once the will was found to resolve the larger issues of land and refuge. Did the Egyptians sabotage the deal? "I know some people say this," replied Clinton. "When Arafat got into the aircraft that took him home he was ready to sign. When he got off in Egypt, he had changed his mind. But I don't think (Hosni) Mubarak was responsible (for the failure)."

Clinton recalled that he felt confident of success at Camp David when at long last the two delegations began to relax and joke during the negotiations.

So when, and why, did Yasser Arafat become No-Sir (Clinton's term) Arafat?

Clinton was thoughtful. The talks failed, he said, because Arafat could not change from the radical that he had been all his life. Maybe Arafat had some serious political problems as well. Perhaps he felt that Israel could not have delivered on the deal (it still had to be ratified) without the support of a Clinton in the White House. Perhaps there were other reasons. Clinton said he could appreciate how the mind of a man who had survived fifty assassination attempts, who had been uprooted many times, might work. But there was no escape from the core conclusion. The peace deal failed because Arafat could not change from the radical he had been all his life. He could not shed his past. Arafat was not prepared within for that moment of history.

The peace that failed, and the Sharon visit to Temple Mount, provoked the passions that set off an intifada that has wreaked havoc upon yet another generation of Palestinians and Israelis. Their fate remains divided by a line of folly. That Palestinian girl with flowers in her hand is still waiting for Arafat and Sharon to return to the right side of wisdom.

Was Atal Behari Vajpayee, all through the lunch a perfect host, permitting his guest to sparkle while he held to the shadows, being excessively optimistic when he placed his faith in peace in another difficult neighbourhood? For five years now Vajpayee has been Prime Minister. He has seen more roller-coaster drama in this time than Prime Ministers with twice that time in office. There was the hope of Lahore, the betrayal of Kargil, the defeat in Parliament, the victory in general elections, and always the unceasing haemorrhage of cross-border terrorism. But he never lost his faith in peace. Slowly, the momentum was established for Agra; and failure at Agra produced a devastating backlash of terrorism that nearly wrecked our Parliament in session and took the subcontinent to the brink of a nuclear war. That was perhaps the toughest moment to sustain hope, but Vajpayee did so. Clinton's remark was simple: no matter what the odds, it never hurts to believe in peace. There is always a peace dividend.

Is that what we are seeing now, as India and Pakistan cap their heavy guns, stretch a ceasefire into the Siachen and talk of land, sea and air routes opening up? So much blood has dripped across the last two decades that peace seems an unreal possibility. But perhaps it truly does lurk around that elusive corner.

When Atal Behari Vajpayee goes to Islamabad in January, perhaps the little baby girl called Noor should welcome him with a flower. Maybe she will not yet understand what she is doing, but the rest of us will.

MJ Akbar is Chief Editor of the Asian Age.