WASHINGTON
- Despite its current preoccupation with Iraq, the US
administration should step up its engagement in the
Indian sub-continent, which can no longer be considered
peripheral to US interests, says a major new report by
two key think tanks.
Washington must devote
"sustained and high-level attention" to India and
Pakistan and be "more active" in helping the two
nuclear-armed neighbors manage their conflicts, argues
the "Chairmen's Report" of a joint task force on India
and South Asia co-sponsored by the Council on Foreign
Relations and the Asia Society.
At the same
time, the administration of US President George W Bush
must devote more resources and broaden the popular base
and authority of the government of Afghanistan President
Hamid Karzai by supporting the deployment of
international peacekeeping forces beyond Kabul,
particularly in Pashtun areas where the Taliban and its
allies appear to be making a comeback.
"We are
at a pivotal point in Afghanistan," warned task force
co-chairman and former US ambassador to India, Frank
Wisner, at the report's launch on Thursday. "We've got
to get the security issue right." Added Dennis Kux, who
directed the task force, "There would be an enormous
impact on Pakistan if the Taliban were to come back to
power."
The 93-page report, "New Priorities in
South Asia", offers a general framework for how
Washington should treat the region in coming years. In
addition to Wisner, other co-chairs included Asia
Society president and former US ambassador to Pakistan
Nicholas Platt, and Marshall Bouton, president of the
Chicago Council on Foreign Relations.
Their
50-person task force consists mainly of regional
specialists, prominent expatriates from all three
countries, arms-control experts and retired senior US
diplomats like Wisner and Platt. Traditionally such
groups exercise a strong influence on US policy,
particularly if, as in this case, their proposals
represent a consensus view of participants.
The
group's "core conclusion", according to Wisner, was that
South Asia has achieved an unprecedented importance to
the US on a range of issues and that Washington needs to
treat it accordingly.
Of the three countries
covered by the report, the task force was most upbeat
about India which, "with its political stability and a
decade of steady economic advance, has the potential for
long-term political and security partnership and
substantially expanded trade and economic relations with
the United States".
The group found that, after
a long estrangement during the Cold War, US and Indian
interests on all fronts "broadly coincide", to such an
extent that Washington should treat India as a "friendly
country", a status that would, for example, further ease
restrictions on exports of sensitive "dual-use"
technology that has military as well as civilian
applications.
The report also called for a more
sustained trade policy dialogue that could, among other
things, result in a free trade accord on services, which
could provide more hi-tech jobs for Indians in exchange
for permitting US business to compete in finance, law,
accounting and related professional services.
Potential obstacles to the consolidation of a
"genuine partnership" with Washington over the coming
years, the report says, include India's failure to
further liberalize its economy; possible conflict with
Pakistan; and the maintenance of India's social and
communal peace, which, could be challenged by the rise
of Hindu extremists in the ruling Bharatiya Janata
Party.
Prospects for continued close ties with
Pakistan, described as "one of the most complex and
difficult challenges facing US diplomacy anywhere in the
world today", are seen as considerably more problematic.
While Islamabad has become a valued partner in
the war on terrorism, the two countries' policies "only
partially coincide", says the report.
Pakistan's
continued support for "Islamist terrorists" waging jihad
in Kashmir; its continued failure to prevent pro-Taliban
elements from using Pashtun tribal areas as a base to
attack Afghanistan; and its alleged nuclear commerce
with North Korea must be major concerns for Washington,
which should adopt a "much more nuanced approach than
that followed by the Bush administration".
While
the task force recommended congressional approval for a
five-year, US$3 billion aid package for Pakistan, it
called for reshaping its contents. Instead of a 50-50
split in the money between social and economic aid on
the one hand and security and military assistance on the
other, the first category should get two-thirds of the
funding. Much of that assistance should be targeted at
education, projects in Pashtun areas adjoining
Afghanistan and institutional reforms to improve
governance.
In particular, US aid should nurture
non-governmental organizations and civil society, while
pressing the government to reduce military interference
- particularly that of the Inter-Services Intelligence -
which has covertly backed Islamist parties, in political
affairs.
In addition, Washington should commit
to providing only one-half of the $3 billion. The rest
should be conditioned on the government implementing
political, social and economic reforms, its cooperation
on terrorism, and its non-proliferation of sensitive
technologies. Finally, Washington should ease
restrictions on Pakistani textile imports, the report
adds.
As for relations between India and
Pakistan, the document calls on Washington to be "more
active" in helping the two countries manage their
rivalry. Although some task force members suggested the
US offer to mediate the conflict over Kashmir, the
majority opted for a somewhat more restrained role in
which Washington could offer suggestions to the parties
about how to move forward. "Only India and Pakistan can
settle these matters," Wisner said.
In the short
term, Washington should help start a bilateral
negotiation, possibly by working out a "comprehensive
ceasefire" along the Kashmir Line of Control (LoC), the
most likely flashpoint for wider conflict, argues the
document.
While Pakistan should be pressed more
vigorously to make good on President General Pervez
Musharraf's pledge to stop infiltration across the LoC,
India should step up economic development in Kashmir and
reach an accord with the state government that would
ease the burden caused by its security forces.
On the nuclear front, the task force called for
Washington to review ways to incorporate India and
Pakistan into the global non-proliferation framework.
In the meantime, the US should work with both to
ensure tighter controls against either country leaking
sensitive technology or material to third parties, and
to implement confidence-building measures to reduce
misunderstandings about missile deployments and flight
tests.
As for Afghanistan, the report stressed
that the US is "still a long way from [its] goal of a
stable self-governing state" 19 months after the defeat
of the Taliban. "Apart from Afghanistan itself, perhaps
no nation has a greater stake than the United States has
in Afghanistan's achieving [its] goals and not reverting
to civil war and anarchy," the report concluded.
(Inter Press Service)
Nov 1, 2003
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