Title: U.S. Backs India,
Sees No Role Now in Kashmir
Author: Edwin Chen,
Dexter Filkins, Times Staff Writers
Publication: Los Angeles
Times
Date: March 22, 2000
NEW DELHI--President
Clinton opened his five-day tour of India on Tuesday by endorsing New Delhi's
position on the volatile region of Kashmir, rejecting calls by longtime
U.S. ally Pakistan to referee the dispute.
Standing with Indian
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, Clinton implored the subcontinent's
two nuclear-armed rivals to refrain from attacking each other across the
450-mile contested border known as the Line of Control. Clinton supported
India's view that peace talks between India and Pakistan cannot go forward
until the fighting stops.
The United States has
refused to become involved in the dispute over Kashmir, where armed groups
backed by Pakistan are fighting to expel the Indian government. The insurgency
has killed 25,000 people since 1990, and the region is regarded by many
as one of the world's likeliest starting points for a nuclear war.
Clinton made his remarks
amid increasing violence along the disputed border and one day after 40
Indian Sikhs were massacred in a village in Indian Kashmir. India's leaders
blamed Pakistani-backed guerrillas for the attack.
"We certainly share your
outrage and heartbreak over last night's brutal attack in Kashmir," Clinton
said after a closed-door meeting with Vajpayee. "It reminds us what tremendous
suffering this conflict has caused India. The violence must end."
Clinton called on the
rival nations to resume a dialogue over Kashmir, but he suggested that
Pakistan's continued support for guerrilla groups makes peace talks more
difficult.
"This should be a time
for restraint, for respect for the Line of Control, for renewed lines of
communications," Clinton said. "You cannot expect a dialogue to go forward
unless there is an absence of violence."
The president's remarks
appeared to set the stage for a tense meeting with Pakistan's military
leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, whom Clinton will visit Saturday. The Pakistani
leader, who came to power last year in a coup, has called the struggle
over Kashmir a "holy war" and reaffirmed his support for Islamic groups
fighting there.
Vajpayee welcomed the
apparent shift in U.S. policy, even as he threatened to crush the Pakistani-backed
movement in Kashmir.
"There is a deliberate
design to foment trouble, to encourage killing, mass murders, to sabotage
any attempt at normalcy in this part of the world," Vajpayee said. "We
have the means and the will to eliminate this menace."
Kashmir dominated the
first day of Clinton's visit, touted by both the U.S. and Indian governments
as the beginning of a new era in bilateral relations. The two democracies
often found themselves at odds during the Cold War, and Clinton and Vajpayee
said Tuesday that they are eager to start anew. They agreed to a range
of measures designed to put the relationship on a better track.
At Clinton's invitation,
Vajpayee will visit Washington next year--the first Indian prime minister
to travel to the United States since 1994. Clinton is the first U.S. president
to visit India in 22 years.
"We have neglected this
relationship for more than two decades. It is too important to ever fall
into disrepair again," Clinton told an audience outside Hyderabad House,
a splendorous mansion in central New Delhi. "India and America should be
better friends and stronger partners."
Amid the pronouncements,
the two men reached some significant accords. New Delhi agreed to expand
market access for U.S. farmers trying to export their products to India.
The agreement will lower tariffs by as much as half on a range of products,
including almonds and various citrus products, such as orange juice.
Clinton also directed
the U.S. Agency for International Development to restart a four-year, $25-million
initiative to help India strengthen its financial markets and regulatory
agencies. The U.S. halted the project in the wake of India's 1998 nuclear
tests.
"Our objective is to
forge a durable, politically constructive and economically productive partnership
between the world's two largest democracies," Vajpayee said. "We have laid
a foundation."
Earlier in the day, India
accorded Clinton a colorful welcoming ceremony in the courtyard of Rashtrapati
Bhawan, the presidential palace. Accompanied by daughter Chelsea, the president
then visited a black marble platform with an eternal flame near the banks
of the Yamuna River, which marks the spot where Mohandas K. "Mahatma" Gandhi
was cremated in 1948. There, Clinton planted a flowering magnolia sapling.
The violence in Kashmir
loomed over the festivities in New Delhi, as it will undoubtedly do when
the president lands in Pakistan. The conflict over the Himalayan region
began when British-ruled India gained independence--and Pakistan was created
out of part of it--in 1947. The Hindu-majority states formed what is now
India, and the Muslim-dominated ones became Pakistan--except for Kashmir,
a Muslim-majority state that both countries rushed to occupy.
India and Pakistan have
fought two wars over the region, an area of lush valleys and jagged peaks
that stretches from Afghanistan to China. Today, each country occupies
part of Kashmir but claims the whole region, and troops regularly shell
each other along the mountainous border. In 1990, Pakistani-backed guerrilla
groups launched an insurgency to wrest the whole of Kashmir from Indian
control. Pakistan provides sanctuary for militants who cross the border
into Indian Kashmir.
The local conflict became
a global concern in 1998, when India and Pakistan conducted nuclear tests.
U.S. diplomats fear that a future war could escalate into a nuclear exchange.
Last summer, Pakistani troops seized a string of mountain peaks near the
Indian town of Kargil, and 1,000 people died in the fighting. The Kargil
battle, coupled with the seizure of power by the military in Pakistan,
has driven relations to their worst point in three decades.
Both sides are jockeying
for U.S. support for their policies in Kashmir. Pakistan's leaders want
the U.S. to intervene and impose a solution. India's leaders want Washington
to stay out of the Kashmir dispute, but they would like U.S. leaders to
use their influence over Pakistan to shut down the guerrillas.
On Tuesday, Clinton appeared
to share the Indian view. Indian officials said the question of direct
U.S. mediation in Kashmir never came up. Vajpayee, who leads the Hindu
nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, is under intense pressure at home to
keep the U.S. out of Kashmir.
India's leaders have
been historically skittish about third-party involvement, largely because
U.N. resolutions have called for a popular vote to decide Kashmir's fate.
Many in Kashmir would probably vote to leave India, whose troops have been
accused by international organizations of widespread human rights abuses
there.
The bonhomie of the Vajpayee-Clinton
meeting cooled Tuesday night, when India's president chided Clinton for
exaggerating the dangers in Kashmir. Clinton recently called Kashmir "the
most dangerous place in the world right now."
"It has been suggested
that the Indian subcontinent is the most dangerous place in the world today
and Kashmir is a nuclear flash point," President Kocheril Raman Narayanan
told the guests. "These alarmist descriptions will only encourage those
who want to break the peace and indulge in terrorism and violence."
