Appreciates the steps taken by Pakistan so far.
The United States has stepped in the war of words between India and Pakistan over the recent Mumbai terror attacks.
Even as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh yesterday charged Pakistan with using “terrorism as an instrument of state policy” and indicted that its state agencies were a party to the attacks, Islamabad offered a “joint investigation commission to be supervised by the respective national security advisers” and the dispatch of a high-level delegation from New Delhi to Pakistan.
Although this offer was rejected in biting accents by the Indian government, the US appears to have plumped for it. Stopping short of calling for a joint investigation, US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher, who was on a visit to Pakistan earlier this week, appreciated the steps taken by Islamabad so far. He said as more information was uncovered, sharing and follow-up mechanism should also be enhanced. Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper reported that the US wanted a joint investigation commission on which it is a member along with India and Pakistan.
Also, US Vice-President-elect Joe Biden, who is the current chairperson of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and John Kerry, who will succeed Biden, will visit Pakistan and then Mumbai on a “fact-finding” mission.
India today sharpened its position. An Indian spokesman said there was not much point in creating new mechanisms (including a new commission) when existing ones had been subverted by Pakistan. He referred specifically to the Joint Anti Terror Mechanism (JATM) created to deal with precisely the issue of joint investigation.
Business Standard’s enquiries reveal that on at least two occasions when the JATM met — once on the issue of bringing to book the killer of Gujarat Home Minister Haren Pandya — India gave exact coordinates, including the address of the suspected killer. Officials said the Pakistan government took the information, tipped off the accused and returned to report that there was nobody at the address. This compromised the covert operations of Indian intelligence agencies, they said.
But analysts say although India’s grievances are legitimate and there is sympathy for it worldwide, an extended period of standoff and mutual thumbing of noses will only allow space for others to get into the act. They say India should adopt a good-cop bad-cop routine: While talking tough, elements in India should stay in touch with those in Pakistan who are advising the government there to prevent opening several fronts at once and to fall in with India’s demand for a proper investigation.
An editorial in The Daily Times, for instance, noted cautiously that under a SAARC convention, Pakistan “was obliged to hand over Mumbai attackers to India”. It quoted Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon’s “interpretation” that the SAARC Regional Convention on Suppression of Terrorism (1987) suggested that “Pakistan can now share the results with us and extend to us legal assistance so that we can bring the perpetrators to Indian justice. The assistance from Pakistan extends up to and includes extradition”. It said the events of November 26 in Mumbai brought no joy to Pakistan and advised the government to heed the fact that the Chinese Vice Foreign Minister, He Yafei, had counselled Pakistan to “seek peace with India”.
In an interview to Der Spiegel released today but granted before the Indian dossier was presented to Pakistan, the Inter-Service Intelligence chief, Lt Gen Shuja Pasha, said he was willing to travel to New Delhi after Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani accepted a request from his Indian counterpart following the attacks in Mumbai. But “many people here (were) simply not ready,” he added. This suggests the ISI is toning down its rhetoric. He also said: “We may be crazy in Pakistan but not completely out of our minds. We know full well that terror is our enemy, not India.” Pasha, however, regretted that India had not supplied Pakistan “names” or “numbers” as part of its evidence.
The beefing up of domestic defence and creating global disapproval of Pakistan seem to be the twin aims of India’s current strategy. But if the United States tires of this and tries to force the issue, it is not clear how India and Pakistan will behave.
