NEW DELHI/ISLAMABAD, 27 May — India’s prime minister yesterday appeared to offer some breathing space to Pakistan, saying New Delhi would hold off any action pending a diplomatic blitz aimed at forcing Islamabad to crack down on militancy. Premier Atal Behari Vajpayee made the gesture in a speech delivered near the northern Manali hill station shortly after Pakistan ignored international concerns and India’s wrath by testing another ballistic missile.
“We are waiting as to how much the efforts of the international community will succeed,” Vajpayee said in his 20-minute speech after inaugurating a road tunnel in the Himalayan foothills. “We have bought some time,” was a Western diplomat’s assessment of the statement.
The premier lambasted Pakistan once again for not cracking down on militants using Kashmir to launch cross-border raids into India, and issued a rallying call to the nation to unite to fight terrorism. “The whole world should understand that India has a limit to its patience ... We want victory, victory over terrorism.”
And Islamabad’s test of the newly developed short-range Hatf-III (Ghaznavi) missile yesterday came despite heavy criticism by the United States, Russia and France of Islamabad’s timing of the exercise, when tension with India is nearing flash point.
India, as with Pakistan’s first missile test on Saturday, said it was “not impressed” and dismissed the testing as “antics”. The missile test “again leads us to reiterate what we have been saying all along that there is a very real necessity for the international community to understand clearly the actual mindset of the Pakistani leadership”, Indian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Nirupama Rao said in New Delhi.
The short-range Ghaznavi fired by Pakistan was capable of carrying warheads up to 290 kilometers with great accuracy, an official statement said in Islamabad. After the two successful firings, Pakistan’s defenses were “impregnable” Joint Chiefs of Staff committee chairman Gen. Aziz Ahmed Khan said in the statement. “(The) concentration of troops on borders and coercive attitude of any power could not frighten the valiant armed forces of Pakistan, whose soldiers were more keen to embrace martyrdom than saving their lives,” he said.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, meanwhile, has invited key opposition parties to build a political consensus, an official report said in Islamabad yesterday. “The president will take these leaders into confidence on the situation facing Pakistan in the wake of Indian belligerency,” the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan said. Musharraf will also deliver a national address today on the brewing crisis with India and steps taken by his government to address it, it said. Musharraf’s initiative also follows Russian President Vladimir Putin’s proposal that he and Vajpayee hold a peace summit during a conference in Kazakhstan next month.
Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Anatoly Safanov will arrive in Islamabad today to discuss Putin’s proposal for the Pakistan-India summit, according to an official report. Safanov’s visit “is aimed at discussing the Russian invitation”, the APP said. “Any initiative that is taken to bring peace and stability in the region is welcome and Pakistan would take a step forward in that direction,” Pakistani Information Minister Nisar Memon said Saturday.
