ISLAMABAD/NEW DELHI — US Secretary of State Colin Powell concluded his lightning South Asia peace shuttle yesterday with strong calls for archrivals India and Pakistan to hold dialogue on Kashmir, and tough messages to work to end a seven-month standoff.
“It’s time to make regional stability permanent. Kashmir is on the international agenda,” Powell stressed at a press conference at the end of a five-hour visit to Islamabad, the second stop on his weekend swing through the sub-continent. “The problems of Kashmir cannot be resolved through violence, but only through a healthy political process and only through dialogue between the parties.”
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, however, said he did not need to offer any more concessions to India to resolve a dangerous standoff with New Delhi over Kashmir. “I don’t have to do anything because we’ve already done it,” Musharraf told reporters during a photo session with Powell at the Chief Executive’s Office.
He rejected Indian charges Pakistan-based rebels were still crossing the de facto border in disputed Kashmir to launch attacks in the Indian-controlled zone of the Himalayan region. “It is already stopped in the past. It is not taking place and whatever the Indian side is saying is absolutely baseless,” Musharraf said.
In New Delhi, carefully targeted hurling of diplomatic missiles during Powell’s trip to the subcontinent spelt a virtual dead end for United States’ peace mission drive aimed at bringing India and Pakistan together for talks. During the visit, certain differences between India and the US regarding the Indo-Pak Kashmir dispute, Kashmir elections and infiltration also surfaced.
Accusing Musharraf of being guilty of “terminological inexactitude” in his claims of having stopped the flow of militants in Kashmir, Indian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Nirupama Rao said “infiltration continues. We are concerned about spurts in infiltration in the past few weeks.” Indian leaders say the incursions have diminished but not stopped, accusing Musharraf of reneging on pledges to Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, in May and June to permanently halt the cross-border flow of militants.
Musharraf reiterated Pakistan’s insistence that India agree to dialogue to find an end to the standoff between the nuclear-armed neighbors, who have had a million troops deployed along their shared border since December. “Our stand is very, very clear. We need to start a dialogue on Kashmir and all of the issues,” Musharraf said. “That’s what we want to see. The reciprocation and response (we want) from them is to initiate a dialogue on Kashmir.”
Dialogue has been at the top of Islamabad’s agenda for months. But India continued to shun the idea of talks with its bitter enemy, cold-shouldering Powell’s call as premature because, it charges, Pakistani-based rebels are still sneaking into Kashmir to wage attacks against Indian rule. “We do not think the necessary conditions exist at present,” Indian Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha said in New Delhi late Saturday.
Powell contradicted Musharraf’s insistence that rebel incursions into India had stopped. “We still are not able to say that they have been stopped, although they have gone down,” Powell said after meeting Musharraf. “The important thing to take note of is the fact that tension has gone down significantly, and even the Indians acknowledge that to a degree cross-border infiltration has gone down.”
Powell shuttled to Islamabad from New Delhi, where he told Indian leaders, including Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, to deploy foreign observers to monitor elections in Kashmir set for October and to release “political prisoners” ahead of the vote.
