NEW DELHI, 27 July — Faced with drought in the north, floods in the east and escalating attacks by militants in Kashmir, India appears in no mood to give an inch when Colin Powell comes calling this weekend.
If anything, officials say, New Delhi will demand that the US secretary of state strong-arm Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to make good his promise to rein in the rebels sneaking into Kashmir to commit massacres.
Officials have made it clear India will also voice its displeasure to Powell, who arrives here today at the start of a two-day South Asia peace-seeking mission, at a decision by the Pentagon to resume sales of military hardware to Pakistan after a 12-year suspension. As an indication of Delhi’s current coldness toward Washington, no meeting between Powell and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has been officially arranged — although sources say such a face-to-face is still likely.
The decision to hold back an appointment with Vajpayee, The Tribune newspaper said, was because India expected "nothing tangible or concrete" from the visit as the United States was treating Pakistan with kid gloves. The Indian Express said the intended snub it was linked to the fact that Delhi "does not see any forward movement on the assurances given by US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage on the infiltration issue."
External Affairs Ministry spokeswoman Nirupama Rao earlier this week spelled out the message awaiting Powell, the latest in a string of envoys to visit the region to try to calm passions between India and Pakistan and initiate substantive talks on the future of Kashmir. "We will put across our concerns to (Powell)," Rao said.
"Firstly, our concerns about the fact that infiltration is continuing. And that terrorism remains a state policy of Pakistan." The US has spurned India’s call for Pakistan to be branded a terrorist state, saying Islamabad is a key ally in its war on terrorism.
Pakistan, for its part, claims it has indeed reined in the militants and that it is now up to India to de-escalate tensions by withdrawing its troops from the borders — sent there after an attack on Parliament last December it blames on Islamabad.
Powell in Washington on Thursday admitted the potential for violence in Kashmir was still high, despite a reduction in infiltrations by militants into the Indian sector.
"In my conversations with the Indians and the Pakistanis, I will see if there are any other actions that can be taken that will reduce the level of violence or the potential for violence," Powell said, giving notice of his tack in South Asia.
Media yesterday all but ignored Powell’s impending visit, aside from highlighting that no Powell-Vajpayee meeting was on the cards. Instead newspapers devoted their main pages to a ravaging drought in the north where the monsoon has failed, and devastating floods in the east where the monsoon has arrived with a vengeance.
Meanwhile, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, held talks with top leaders yesterday in another effort by the West to calm tensions between India and Pakistan. Officials said Islamabad’s alleged support to militancy in Kashmir was the main focus of the talks.
Solana held wide-ranging talks with External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha, which led held to delegation-level discussions on ways to intensify India-EU contacts. Yashwant and Solana also discussed the situation in Afghanistan and the military tensions between rivals India and Pakistan over Kashmir, Rao said.
"Solana and Yashwant Sinha fully agreed that the fight against terrorism must be global," Rao said just before the EU official went into closed-door talks with Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani.
