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PM meeting Bush : His baggage of issues |
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Prime Minister Vajpayee, who will directly flying to US after a four-day visit to Russia, in addition to addressing the UN General Assembly session in New York, will also go to Washington for talks at the White House with President George Bush. He will meet Mr. Bush on Nov. 9 and address the General Assembly the next day. Bush’s invitation to Vajpayee for a working visit was conveyed by the US Secretary of State Colin Powell during his visit to India early this month. Pakistan President Musharraf is also visiting the UN on the same day but no such invitation for talks with Mr. Bush was delivered to him by Mr. Powell. Political observers note that last year when Vajpayee flew into Washington from New York, the Clinton Administration insisted that there should be a gap of several days - a week in fact - between the Indian Prime Minister’s address to the General Assembly and his meetings in Washington. The idea was to keep alive the convention that Heads of State and Government do not just drop into the White House after their business at the UN. This time, however, it is different. Vajpayee will meet Bush on Nov. 9 and the very next day will address the World Body. Political observers say, this, combined with the significance of his arrival in Washington directly from Moscow after parleys with President Vladimir Putin, highlights India’s place in the post-Sept. 11 diplomatic blitz and belies criticism that New Delhi is peripheral to the current campaign against terrorism.
In his testimony before the Congress on Oct. 26, Colin Powell described India as “a natural ally” of the US and renewed his call for an Indo-Pak dialogue on Kashmir. Secretary Powell who visited Islamabad and New Delhi earlier this month said, in India he found strong support for the war against terrorism, and remarked that US relations with India and Pakistan are not a “zero sum game where if one benefits, the other loses”. We can have solid relations with both, he said.
Mr. Powell is, however, very anxious that India and Pakistan observe strict restraint as any eruption of hostilities between the two could have a negative impact on the US campaign in Afghanistan for which Washington is banking on the cooperation of these two countries - but more on Pakistan because of its geographical proximity to Afghanistan. Talking to newsmen en route Washington from a visit to Shanghai in China on Oct 23, Mr. Powell urged both India and Pakistan to act with “enormous restraint” in spite of the tensions and offered his help in getting a dialogue started between them. He said, both sides were committed to the US-led coalition against global terrorism and were helping the US. In that sense, he said, even though there is tension, they have to act with enormous restraint. Agreeing that they are finding difficulty in getting the dialogue started, Mr. Powell said, “I will try to be helpful in this regard.”
Powell’s Deputy Richard Armitage, has indicated America’s “triangular game” of simultaneously taking India and Pakistan would end with the completion of the Afghanistan mission because the US wants to build independent relations with the two countries. Deputy Secretary of State Armitage in an interview with the Indian English daily Hindu, welcomed the “political choice” made by Gen Musharraf to support the US not because of US pressure but because of Pakistan’s own national interest. Mr. Amritage, who called for resumption of Indo-Pak dialogue said, the ongoing changes in Pakistan were in India’s interest as well.
India’s concerns that the US is refashioning a new alliance with Pakistan continue, but Government sources say India has kept itself in the new great game quite successfully. First; toppling the Taliban and replace it with something less friendly to Pakistan. Taliban has allowed the territory of Afghanistan to be the recruiting ground of terrorists who are then exported to Kashmir. This goal is sure to be achieved since the US is bent upon throwing the Taliban into history’s dustbin. India has teamed up with Iran and Russia to support the Northern Alliance, and to some extent, Zahir Shah, to reduce Islamabad’s influence. Islamabad is so far unsuccessful in finding a pliant alternative to the Taliban. The second Indian goal was to limit the breath and depth of a new US-Pakistan relationship. Geography has forced a marriage of interests between the US and Pakistan. India accepts that reality. The real issue is ensuring that it does not go too far. India counts on three factors to keep an alliance in abeyance. One, it has worked hard to show up Pakistan’s complicity in Afghanistan-based terrorism. India is reported to have tipped off the US that the ISI financially backed the STC suicide hijacker, Mohammed Atta. The sacking of the ISI chief, Mehmood Ahmad, was a direct consequence. Pakistan is in a Catch-22 spot. The more intelligence they share with the US, the more they indict themselves as accomplices.
New Delhi has helped ensure the tangible gains for Pakistan have been limited. Knowing India will go ballistic, the Bush Administration has made it clear to Pakistan it won’t touch Kashmir with a bargepole. US officials say even any future arms sales to Pakistan will be defensive - no biggies like fighters or warships. Third, India believes that Bush has a larger vision of India that those close to him say goes far beyond the war against terrorism. India will, therefore, try and ensure that the coalition against terrorism turns against Kashmir militancy sometimes in the future.
Informed sources say, when Indian forces launched an attack on the Pakistani positions across the Line of Control on the eve of the visit of Colin Powell destroying 12 of Pakistani bunkers and posts and killing some 30 militants, India had fully taken the US into confidence. Sources say after the US lost any leverage on Pakistan that it had applied on that country over the LoC [like the one during the Kargil intrusion], Vajpayee was told by the USA that it should no longer count on Washington to hold back Pakistan. New Delhi’s response was that India would then use its own firepower to ensure that Pakistan did not get too much carried away by the US support. The US is believed to have said it was prepared to look the other way.
On the other hand, Musharraf’s strategy was to make Kashmir rather than Afghanistan the main item on the agenda of discussions with the visiting US Secretary of State. That is why only a few hours before his arrival, Pakistanis indulged in their favourite pastime of infiltrating into Jammu and Kashmir heavily armed and indoctrinated terrorists. The only thing that went wrong with the Pakistani plan was that the Indian security forces were ready with a riposte this time round. They felled more than two dozen infiltrators and flatted a dozen Pakistani bunkers and fortifications across the LoC in the Mendhar and Akhnoor sectors.
This, however, is a side show. The real objective of Islamabad was to pin down Powell and thus the USA to “taking a more active part” in promoting a “purposeful” dialogue between India and Pakistan to resolve the Kashmir issue. His statement on arrival in Pakistan indicates that the USA considers such a dialogue desirable and indeed necessary. Since a mere resumption of dialogue would not satisfy the jehadis, Gen. Musharraf advocated that America should “mediate” between India and Pakistan. Otherwise, he said, this dialogue would remain sterile as in the past.
Political observers say, the key question, therefore, is how will the USA coddle its new-found frontline ally in the Afghan war without causing offence to India, so far a non-playing member of the global coalition against terrorism, as it was bound to be, given the geographic and geostrategic imperatives of the situation. For the first time, the USA has used the word terrorism in relation to the horrific suicide attacks on the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly on Oct. 1. But it has not yet linked this ghastly incident with Pakistan. It has belatedly blacklisted Jaish-e-Mohammed that first accepted the responsibility for the outrage and later denied it. But, it is totally silent on Jaish’s links with the ISI that may not have been snapped despite the change in the notorious intelligence agency’s stewardship.
But, political observers say, America’s Sept. 11 tragedy now is bound to shift the focus from trumped-up allegations of human rights violations to Pak-backed terrorist violence by foreign mercenaries in Kashmir. Hitherto, the developed countries, now advocating a military solution for cubing the menace, had either passively watched the terrorists’ ghastly acts or only paid lip service to the need to tackle the problem, of which India was the worst victim.
Ironically, the Sept. 11 outraged as exposed the double standards the US Government has followed in the international arena in relation to terrorism. It was the US Administration which with the help and connivance of Pakistan, had created the Taliban militia for sing them against the Soviet Union. Bin Laden is also their creation. Now they have become Frankenstein for America. Whenever India raised the issue of the decade-long but since vanquished Pak-sponsored separatist terrorism in Punjab, the US and its allies adopted an indifferent attitude. Instead, they often echoed the extremists charge of alleged human rights violations by India. The same attitude was adopted in the case of cross-border terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir. It has taken thousands of innocent American lives and destruction of property worth billion of dollars besides exposure of the vulnerability of the “impregnable” super power image to make the US realise the magnitude of the threat the world faces from global terrorism. But, political observers say, the Bush Administration will ignore at its own peril the fact that while the world has condemned the innocent’s killings in New York and Washington, there are large sections among the international community which feel that Washington’s double standards on terrorism have pushed it into its present unenviable situation.
During Bill Clinton’s regime, the US had become closer to India, ending its traditional pro-Pak tilt. The Bush Administration’s old stand on Kashmir was also showing signs of change. But, the Bush Administration has again started mending America’s ties with Pakistan without adversely affecting the newly-developed friendship between India and the US. In this era of globalised economy, observers say, no Administration in the US can afford to ignore the advantage India’s vast market offers to the developed countries. But, the Bush Administration might be wanting to make Pakistan its frontline State once again, to face any eventuality in the event of China and Russia forming an alliance. Another consideration of the Bush Administration for re-establishing the old ties with Pakistan perhaps is that it would like to use the land route of Pakistan and Afghanistan for evacuating the Central Asian republics’ natural wealth. Because of its changed equation under Clinton with Pakistan, which had been sustaining the Taliban Government, this could not have been possible. Now, by opting to side with the US, Pakistan has ensured a say for itself in any new setup that may replace the Taliban government.
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