News
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
US aims to ease India-Pakistan tensions* WSJ report says Obama issued a secret directive in December to intensify US diplomacy aimed at easing tensions between India and Pakistan
* Directive asserts that without détente between the two rivals, Washington’s efforts to win Pakistani cooperation in Afghanistan would sufferDaily Times Monitor
LAHORE: President Barack Obama issued a secret directive in December to intensify American diplomacy aimed at easing tensions between India and Pakistan, asserting that without détente between the two rivals, US efforts to win Pakistan’s cooperation in Afghanistan would suffer, the Wall Street Journal said on Monday.
The paper reported that the directive said India must make resolving its tensions with Pakistan a priority for progress to be made on US goals in the region, according to people familiar with its contents. “A debate continues within the US administration over how hard to push India, which has long resisted outside intervention in the conflict with its neighbour. The Pentagon, in particular, has sought more pressure on New Delhi,” the paper reported US and Indian officials as saying.
Current and former US officials told WSJ that discussions in Washington over how to approach India had intensified, as Pakistan ratchets up requests that the US intercede in a series of continuing disputes.
Pakistan has long regarded Afghanistan as providing “strategic depth” in a potential conflict with India and some US officials believe Islamabad will remain reluctant to genuinely fight Islamic militants along the Afghan border unless the sense of threat from India reduces.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has already taken the political risk of pursuing peace talks with Pakistan, but faces significant domestic opposition to any additional outreach without Pakistani efforts to acts against terrorists.
The officials said the Obama administration has so far made few concrete demands of New Delhi, but the only specific request has been to discourage India from getting more involved in training the Afghan military, WSJ said.
“This is an administration that’s deeply divided about the wisdom of leaning on India to solve US problems with Pakistan,” Ashley Tellis, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told the paper. “There are still important constituencies within the administration that have not given up hope that India represents the answer.” India has long resisted outside involvement in its differences with Pakistan, particularly over the Kashmir dispute.
But a US government official said a 56-page dossier presented by Pakistan to the Obama administration ahead of high-level talks in Washington last month contained a litany of accusations against the Indian government, and suggestions the US intercede on Pakistan’s behalf.
He said the document alleges that India never accepted Pakistan’s sovereignty as an independent state, is diverting water from the Indus River and fomenting separatism in Balochistan.
The White House declined to comment on Obama’s directive or on the debate within the administration over India policy.
An Indian government official told WSJ that the US increasing attention to Pakistani concerns hasn’t hurt bilateral relations overall. “Our relationship is mature—of course we have disagreements, but we’re trying not to have knee-jerk reactions,” he told the paper.
American and Indian officials said the Pentagon had emerged in Obama administration’s internal debates as an active lobbyist for more pressure on India, with some officials already informally pressing Indian officials to take Pakistan’s concerns more seriously. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the US government’s prime interlocutor with the powerful head of the Pakistani army, Gen Ashfaq Kayani, has been among the more vocal advocates of a greater Indian role, according to a US military official, encouraging New Delhi to be more “transparent” about its activities along the countries’ shared border and to cooperate more with Pakistan.
However, the State Department has resisted such moves to pressure India, according to current and former US officials, insisting they could backfire. These officials have argued that the most recent promising peace effort—secret reconciliation talks several years ago between Indian Prime Minster Singh and then-Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf—occurred without US involvement.
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk