KARACHI, 20 December — When Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee stood up in the parliament yesterday and said that India was using diplomacy as its first weapon to put pressure on Pakistan over last week’s suicide raid on the parliament building, it seemed obvious that international pressure had played a role in somewhat reducing the level of confrontation between the nuclear neighbors of South Asia. Otherwise, Indian leaders, particularly Home Minister L.K. Advani, had been breathing fire in accusing Pakistan of involvement in the terrorist attack and the threat of this tension getting out of control seemed very real.
On its part, while rejecting its involvement in the incident, Pakistan was also strident in responding to the Indian threats and had said that it was ready to defend the country against any Indian advance. India had blamed the attack on extremist organizations based in Pakistan and there were also accusations about the involvement of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the government itself. Pakistan demanded evidence of these charges and proposed a joint investigation — a suggestion that was promptly rejected by India.
Since this fresh conflict between the old rivals had risen at a time when the world’s attention was riveted to the concluding phase of war in Afghanistan, it was left to the United States to readily seek a lessening of tensions to protect its campaign against terrorism from a possibly serious disruption. After all, both Pakistan and India have committed their support to the international coalition. In fact, Vajpayee’s remarks yesterday came after the US urged both India and Pakistan to fight terrorists and not each other in response to the attack on Indian parliament.
First, it was Secretary of State Colin Powell who warned India and Pakistan not to allow situation in the region to "spiral out of control." He noted that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf had condemned the attack and promised to take action against the terrorist organization which might have been responsible for the attack. He asked both countries to come together in the campaign against terrorism. But a more clear picture of the role that the US had played in this encounter emerged when the White House spokesman Ari Fleischer informed newsmen on Tuesday that President George W. Bush and other members of his Cabinet were in touch with the leaders of India and Pakistan, both countries being US allies on terrorism. He also said that Colin Powell had spoken to Musharraf and had urged that Pakistan should curb the extremists.
This expectation that Pakistan would deal effectively with its extremists is crucial to the bonds that the US is establishing in the region and India hopes that after Afghanistan, the issue of what it terms as "cross-border terrorism" in the disputed territory of Kashmir will attract American attention. Pakistan, in this context, is in a somewhat ambivalent position. It has announced its plan to root out religious extremism in the wake of its support to anti-Taleban forces. At the same time, it argues that the people engaged in an armed struggle against Indian forces in Kashmir are freedom fighters and not terrorists.
In its report on Sunday, The New York Times said that the US was planning to increase pressure on Pakistan to curb the activities of two mujahideen groups after the attack on Indian parliament. The paper, quoting American officials, said that in its efforts to obtain the continued cooperation of Pakistan in the fight against Osama Bin Laden and his network, the Bush administration had refrained from pushing too hard for it to clamp down on Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Jaish-e-Muhammad, two organizations that have been named by India. These organizations have operated openly in Pakistan and advocate violence to drive India out of Kashmir.
Pakistan has "told us that they are planning on moving gradually to curb this kind of extremism," a senior State Department official told The New York Times. But now, the official felt, the process would have to be accelerated. A Western diplomat in Islamabad said that the Bush administration would push Pakistan to restrain extremist groups to try to reduce tensions with India over Kashmir.
Not just the US, many other nations have urged the two countries to exercise restraint and the most important among them, at least for Pakistan, is China. Musharraf is now in China on an official visit and the two old friends are sure to have a lot to discuss against the backdrop of the war in Afghanistan. China has committed itself to the international campaign against terrorism but it may have some worries about the growing influence of the US in the region and the close relationship that the US is fostering with Pakistan. But while relations between Pakistan and the US have seen their ups and downs, Pakistan’s friendship with China has remained steady and dependable.
