Asia Times: Powell plays it both ways


	January 18, 2002	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Powell plays it both ways
By Sudha Ramachandran

BANGALORE - After decades of barely figuring on the United States foreign policy radar, South Asia has of late become the focus of Washington's diplomatic efforts. Since September 11 there has been a steady stream of top ranking officials visiting the region.

At first glance, the focus of the diplomatic efforts pre and post the December 13 terror attacks on the Indian parliament might seem different. For instance, when US Secretary of State Colin Powell went to India and Pakistan exactly three months back, his mission was to shore up support for the US war against terrorism. This time, his five-nation trip is said to be aimed at preventing the outbreak of military conflict between India and Pakistan.

However, a closer look indicates that the agenda behind the visits before and after December 13 is not all that different. Powell might be on a "peace mission" to India and Pakistan, but it is to ensure that Washington's war against terrorism can go on unhindered that he is pitching for THE de-escalation of tension between the two countries.

With the troops of the two neighbors deployed and on a state of high alert along the border, tension is at its highest ever since the 1971 war that the countries fought. What makes the current situation so worrying to the international community is that the two countries now possess nuclear weapons.

The possibility of a war between India and Pakistan escalating into a nuclear exchange is, no doubt, an important reason for the calls to de-escalate tension. But it is a fact, too, that the current tension and deployment of troops along the border is hurting US interests. Pakistan has had to divert a significant section of its forces, which were in recent months deployed along its western border with Afghanistan, to its eastern border with India. The US needs to have the Pakistani forces deployed along the Afghan border to prevent Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters from fleeing to Pakistan.

Besides, with India-Pakistan military tension rising, Islamabad has asked the US to vacate some of the airbases it has been using over the past few months, for its own use.

Powell's mission to India and Pakistan is to get the two countries to de-escalate political and military tension by pulling back their troops and to revive the dialogue process.

His statement in Pakistan on Wednesday that "the solution of the [Kashmir] problem lies through dialogue between India and Pakistan" would have pleased New Delhi, which is in favor of bilateralism in resolving outstanding issues with Islamabad. However, his calling for an immediate de-escalation along the border is unlikely to please India, which wants to see Pakistan's President General Pervez Musharraf act on his words of clamping down on those involved in terrorism. On the issue of de-escalation, the US and Pakistan seem to be singing the same tune.

The US correspondent of the Indian daily, Deccan Herald, writes from Washington that "Musharraf has been able to impress Washington with his latest address and Powell indicated that the ball was now in India's court. On the eve of his departure for South Asia, he did not agree with the [Indian] view that Musharraf had yet to match his words with action."

The US is keen that the process of de-escalation should start as early as possible. India maintains that it will wait and watch what the Musharraf administration does on the terrorism front in the coming days.

The Indian government is in favor of keeping its troops deployed on the border until Musharraf shows, through concrete action, that he means what he said in his speech last Saturday. New Delhi feels that it is the diplomatic and military pressure that it imposed on Pakistan that made the world sit up and listen to what India is saying. It is its mobilization of troops at the border that pushed the US to get Musharraf to renounce terrorism. It was pressure and not a change of heart that made Musharraf distance himself from the Kalashnikov culture, India feels.

New Delhi fears that reducing that pressure before Musharraf delivers on his words would be frittering away even the limited gains that it has made in its fight against cross-border terrorism.

Arresting religious extremists is welcome but not enough, as far as India is concerned. Reports indicate that most of those who have been rounded up in Pakistan have been involved in sectarian violence inside Pakistan. Many of the jihadis operating in Kashmir remain very much at large.

The minimum that New Delhi requires of Pakistan is that it extradite at least the Indians who figure on the list of 20 men based in Pakistan who are wanted for terrorist and criminal acts in India.

US President George W Bush might be "as angry as India" with regard to the December 13 terrorist assault on parliament, but since Musharraf's speech on Saturday and his arrest of hundreds of militants, his administration seems to believe, like Musharraf, that the onus for de-escalating tension now lies with India.

"Islamabad will certainly note with satisfaction that New Delhi and Washington are not quite singing from the same hymn sheet at the moment," writes Sharma.

In the New Delhi leg of his trip to Asia, Powell can be expected to tell his Indian interlocutors that an immediate de-escalation along the border is essential. He will likely point out that it is in India's interest to see that Musharraf can pursue the internal reforms announced on Saturday to its logical end. To that end, a reduction of troop presence along the border would be welcome.

But as an editorial in The Indian Express points out, "the call of the hour" is to "de-escalate terrorism". The Indian and Pakistani troops deployed along the border can help prevent infiltration of troops, it says. "The US felt that nine battalions of the Pakistan army on its border with Afghanistan were useful in containing the flight of Al-Qaeda and Taliban forces from Afghanistan. Surely the military forces of Pakistan and India should be seen as an asset in ensuring that terrorists do not infiltrate into India."

India might not concede Powell's possible request to reduce immediately the troops along the border. It might, as a first step, however, revive the road and rail links that were snapped as part of its coercive diplomacy against Pakistan.

In New Delhi, Powell will avoid using the word mediation, but will offer Washington's "help" and "assistance" and try to nudge New Delhi to the negotiating table.

In Pakistan, Powell referred to "the treatment being meted out to the Kashmiris". When he meets the media on Thursday night, he will be asked to clarify what he meant by that.

During his October visit, in Islamabad Powell referred to Kashmir as the central issue in India-Pakistan relations, endorsing the Pakistani position. He came to Delhi and clarified that he had said Kashmir as a central issue, meaning one among other important issues that trouble relations between the neighbors.

Powell has made two trips in three months to India and Pakistan. Even if he might not succeed in bringing the two rivals to the negotiating table immediately, he would surely have improved his skills with his balancing act in the region. That in itself is a big achievement.

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