SPOTLIGHT

Another Armitage mission

The latest visit by U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage makes it clear that the Bush administration expects India to reduce tensions over Kashmir by reopening a dialogue or allowing the APHC to join the elections.

JOHN CHERIAN
in New Delhi

THE Bush administration's shuttle diplomacy in the subcontinent shows no signs of flagging despite New Delhi's growing scepticism about the United States' efforts at peace-making. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was back in the region this past fortnight on yet another whistle-stop tour. He spent a day each in New Delhi and Islamabad. It was during Armitage's visit in June that a commitment was extracted from Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf about ending cross-border terrorism. New Delhi had assured Armitage at that time that it would wait and watch for the Pakistan government to fulfil its pledge.

AJIT KUMAR/ AP
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage with Defence Minister George Fernandes in New Delhi on August 23.

This time, Armitage's first port of call in South Asia was Colombo. The Bush administration has thrown its weight behind the Sri Lankan government's attempts to broker peace with the Tamil rebels. Armitage also visited the Jaffna peninsula. He was the highest ranking U.S. official to visit the area since the early 1980s.

In July, Secretary of State Colin Powell had toured the region. The growing disillusionment among an influential section of Indian officials with the U.S. policy in the region was evident during the Powell visit. The recent high level changes in South Block seems to have led to a slight reorientation of foreign policy priorities. More emphasis is now sought to be given to India's neighbours and to its traditional friends in the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). There was also considerable criticism from the Opposition parties against the government's dealings with the Bush administration. They had taken exception to Powell's observations on Kashmir. Powell had said that Kashmir was "on the international agenda" and that international observers should be allowed to be present during the coming Assembly elections in the State.

New Delhi was quick to reject any talk of foreign observers to monitor or observe the polls in Kashmir. There has also been a noticeable change in the stance of the Indian Foreign Office on Kashmir-related issues. Senior Indian officials now say that stopping cross-border infiltration is not the only condition Islamabad will have to fulfil in order to normalise bilateral relations. They insist that Pakistan will also have to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure located inside its territory.

Indian officials said that they would hold Pakistan responsible for all acts of terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir as long as Islamabad maintains communication links with terrorists operating inside Kashmir. For them, another "litmus test" of Pakistani intentions will be the cessation of terrorist activities during the run-up to the polls. The Indian foreign policy apparatus is not convinced that Pakistan has kept the commitments it has made to Washington and the international community, although it concedes that cross-border infiltration has come down substantially. The official stance continues to be that all infiltration should stop "permanently", as promised by Musharraf.

The new thinking in South Block is that India will have to untangle the Kashmir problem on its own, without depending too much on Washington. It has now woken up to the reality that the Bush administration has a very special relationship with Musharraf. When Armitage was in the region, President George W. Bush openly described the Pakistani leader as one of the most reliable allies in the "fight against terrorism". This puts the Pakistani strongman in the same boat with the likes of Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon. A $3 billion debt owed by Pakistan to the U.S. for 30 years was rescheduled in late August. Senior Indian officials also claim to have realised that Washington will not expend the same level of energy and time to South Asia as it does to West Asia, preoccupied as it is with the geopolitics of energy and gas.

During Armitage's latest stopover in Delhi he met senior Indian leaders and officials, including Defence Minister George Fernandes and Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister Brajesh Mishra. External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha was out of the country, but Armitage had a long sitting with the Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal. There was not even a photo-call for Armitage with Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee, a pointer to the drift in Indo-U.S. relations. A border skirmish in the Drass sector threatened to overshadow Armitage's visit.

Mishra told mediapersons in Delhi that he had conveyed to Armitage the fact that Pakistan had not kept the promises it had made to Washington and the international community. Mishra indirectly implied that Washington was not doing enough to arm-twist Islamabad into fulfilling its pledges. He said that the promises made by Musharraf "have not been kept. What the US is doing about it, only the U.S. can tell you". Mishra told the media that India had not asked Armitage to convey any messages to Islamabad. Armitage, on the other hand, said that his government would continue to use its good offices to reduce tensions between India and Pakistan. He stressed that his government was giving an "extraordinary amount of attention to this issue".

Armitage tread warily on the issue of elections in Kashmir. It is no secret that the international community wants to see the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) take part in the polls. However, the arrest of some top APHC leaders before the poll dates were announced has diminished considerably the possibility of their participation in the elections. Armitage, however, said that he got the impression that the Government of India was keen to hold elections "in a fair and free and as open as possible" manner. He said that he appreciated the Indian government's willingness to hold talks with the APHC.

Before Armitage embarked on his trip to the region, there was a demand by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom that he should "express publicly the U.S. government's profound concern about the widespread killing of Muslims in the State of Gujarat earlier this year". The statutory U.S. Commission noted that no senior U.S. administration official "has expressed concern over the killings or called for accountability". (British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw had raised the issue with the Indian government during his visit in July.)

In Islamabad, Musharraf told Armitage that while everything possible was being done to stop infiltration, "some infiltration" across the Line of Control (LoC) would continue given the nature of the terrain. Musharraf's position has been virtually endorsed by Washington. Speaking to the media in Islamabad, Armitage said that "no one, here in Pakistan or in India, thinks that the Pakistan government is solely responsible for the infiltration".

Chief of the Army Staff General S. Padmanabhan had expressed similar views earlier in the year and had even ruled out the efficacy of joint patrolling by Indian and Pakistani troops in curbing infiltration. There has been intermittent talk of joint patrolling to try and stop infiltration completely. Musharraf, on the other hand, has repeatedly been suggesting the deployment of an international monitoring force along the LoC. This is not acceptable to New Delhi, which has instead proposed increased "military coordination" between the two Armies, to curb infiltration further. India wants greater interaction between the DGMOs (Directors-General of Military Operations) and sector commanders of both the armies.

But the Pakistani side has been saying that the main issue is New Delhi's continuing reluctance to resume the bilateral dialogue. Musharraf had recently stated that he would take no further steps to curb cross-border terrorism until India reciprocated with an offer to resume the dialogue. "I'm not going to take 10 steps when India does not take even one," he told an international news agency. During his visit to Islamabad Armitage also said that it was "desirable" for Pakistan and India to restart the dialogue process. He said that the U.S. could offer assistance "but cannot impose a solution to the Kashmir problem". It is, however, clear after the latest Armitage visit that the Bush administration also expects India to take further steps to reduce tensions, either by allowing the APHC to contest the elections in Kashmir or by reopening dialogue with Pakistan.