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US encouraged by dialogue: Obama not for Kashmir intervention |
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The US has welcomed a meeting between the leaders of India and Pakistan which generated hopes of a renewed dialogue. Reacting to their Yekaterinburg meeting, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said, “A resumption of such high-level engagement in the aftermath of the November Mumbai attacks is encouraging.” America has said before that India and Pakistan need to continue their dialogue to find joint solutions against terrorism and to promote regional stability, he said.
Stating that the US would not intervene to dictate terms on how India and Pakistan should resolve their differences on issues such as Kashmir, President Obama has suggested that Pakistan and India should put the Kashmir problem on the backburner and tackle other outstanding issues as a way to reduce tensions. In a carefully calibrated interview with Pakistan’s DAWN television on June 21, he tried not to ruffle feathers of either country. He said he did not think it is appropriate for the US to be a mediator between India and Pakistan, but it would like to be helpful in the process. He said, starting with an issue other than Kashmir, India and Pakistan can be in a dialogue together and over time reduce tensions and find areas of common interest.
The US is expected to further nudge India to resume the talks with Pakistan when, after the visit of Under Secretary of State William Burns, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton comes to New Delhi. The issue was also raised during talks the US National Security Adviser, Gen. James Jones, had with his Indian counterpart, M.K. Narayanan and others during his current visit to New Delhi.
Learning from past mistakes
Political observers say it is heartening that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during his Yekaterinburg tête-à-tête with Pakistan President Zardari candidly told him: “I have a limited mandate to tell you that Pakistan should not be used for terrorism against India.” In the past, Pakistan never stood by the commitments it made. For instance, on Dec 22, 2000, Pak-based terrorists of the Lashkar-e-Taiba staged a dramatic attack on the Red Fort, exposing serious shortcomings in security arrangements in Delhi. LeT founder Hafiz Saeed, who enjoys the patronage of the ISI, then proudly proclaimed that he had “unfurled the green flag of Islam” in Delhi. Rather than expressing strong displeasure and retaliating appropriately, New Delhi took a perilous route to direct summit diplomacy with no prior preparation. Gen. Pervez Musharraf was invited to Agra for a meeting which ended in a diplomatic fiasco. Buoyed by what the Pakistani military establishment saw as Indian weakness and ineptitude, yet another protégé of the ISI, the Jaish-e-Mohammed, attacked Parliament House complex on Dec 13, 2001, which took the two countries close to conflict. Similarly, ignoring the involvement of the LeT in the terrorist bombings in Mumbai suburban trains on July 11, 2006, Dr. Singh went into a summit meeting with Gen. Musharraf in Havana on Sept. 16, 2006 in the belief that the Indo-Pak composite dialogue was irreversible. Dr. Singh accepted that Pakistan too was victim of terrorism and agreed to the setting up of a Joint Terror Mechanism which has, however, failed to meet the Indian expectations. Even ardent supporters of this ill-conceived Joint Terror Mechanism now agree that it has been a diplomatic embarrassment. Political observers hope that Dr. Singh would take a leaf from its past mistakes when he believed in the words of Pakistani leaders in good faith only to face embarrassment in the end. Now that he has linked the resumption of talks to Pakistan taking concrete, determined and effective steps to stop terrorism against this country from its soil, no escape route should be left open for Islamabad to deviate from its commitment. While the decision now is to focus only on deliberate Pakistani inaction against the perpetrators and masterminds of the 26/11 outrage in the forthcoming talks between the Foreign Secretaries, it is imperative that the entire emphasis and structure of the dialogue is changed when circumstances permit its resumption.
As remarked by G. Parthsarathy, former Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan, in these circumstances, the entire composite dialogue process with Islamabad should be dramatically restructured. The Indo-Pak ministerial-level Joint Commission should be revived [when Pakistan acts credibly against terrorism] to promote trade and economic cooperation, people-to-people contacts and confidence-building measures. The ill-advised Joint Terror Mechanism should be scrapped and special envoys, together with the chiefs of the ISI and RAW, could meet away from the glare of publicity for candid discussions on terrorism. If India concludes, based on an analysis of the ground situation, that Pakistan presently has no intention of winding up its infrastructure of terrorism, the necessary conclusions should be drawn, internal security further reviewed and a more pro-active policy adopted for exploiting Pakistan’s growing sectarian, linguistic and ethnic fault lines. Finally, Indian establishment should stop shedding tears about Pakistan “also” being a “victim” of terrorism. Pakistan is merely facing the inevitable consequences of supporting terrorism.
Sarabjit closer to noose – petition dismissed
Hapless Indian national Sarabjit Singh, convicted on terrorism charges in Pakistan and sentenced to death, is now left at the mercy of President Asif Ali Zardari. His review petition was dismissed by the Pakistan Supreme Court on June 24 after his lawyer failed to appear in the case. India immediately appealed to Pakistan to consider his case on humanitarian grounds. External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna in a statement urged Pakistan to take a sympathetic and humanitarian view of his case. The Congress Party urged President Zardari to take into account the facts and circumstances of the matter and take a humanitarian view of his mercy petition. His family too has urged the Government to intervene to safe his life.
His lawyer, Rana Abdul Hamid, giving some technical problems for his failure to appear before the court, is proposing to file a restoration petition in the court, saying that the petition was dismissed by default. Hamid had filed four review petitions against the 2005 Supreme Court decision upholding the Lahore High Court death sentence to Sarabjit in four separate cases of terrorism. One petition was dismissed in 2006 and the remaining three on June 24. The apex Court upheld the death sentence handed to him in 1991 by an anti-terrorism court for his alleged involvement in bomb blasts in 1990. Last year, the Pakistan Government decided to indefinitely postpone implementing his death sentence and there is no indication that this position has changed. The 43-year old Sarabjit’s other hope is pinned on the government’s plan to commute all death sentences to life imprisonment to benefit an estimated 7000 death row prisoners, including himself, but there appears to have been no movement since it was announced last year.
Sarabjit was convicted of carrying out four different bombings across Punjab in which 14 people were killed and more than 80 injured. His family claims that he was wrongly convicted. Languishing on death row in Lahore’s Kotlakhpat jail, his fate see-sawed between life and death over the last few years as India lobbied through diplomatic channels for his release.
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