Author: Jyoti Malhotra
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: December 8, 2002
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/archive_full_story.php?content_id=14403
Introduction: Washington demarche
to Delhi to go slow on opening consulates in Jalalabad, Kandahar. Reason:
Musharraf isn't happy
Persuaded by its faithful friend
and ally Pakistan, the United States has recently issued a demarche to
India, suggesting that New Delhi go slow on its political and reconstruction
activities in Afghanistan because these were, in turn, having an adverse
impact on a weakened President Musharraf in Islamabad.
The Americans are said to have pointed
out that India's determination to carve out a presence in post-Taliban
Afghanistan, for example by opening consulates in key cities like Kandahar
and Jalalabad-both near the Pak border and considered by Islamabad as part
of its sphere of influence-was causing significant heartburn within Musharraf's
charmed circle.
A shocked Foreign Office responded
by allegorically telling the US diplomat that the shoe, really, was on
the other foot. That India, along with the international community, continued
to be concerned about the fact that Pakistan was turning out to be a safe
haven for the Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, including top leaders like Osama
bin Laden, more than a year after the US bombing of Afghanistan. Moreover,
Musharraf was hardly doing enough to go after these men.
Highly placed sources here said
that the US had even in the past referred to India's proactive impulses
in Afghanistan but that the reference to Pakistan had always been of a
''general'' nature.
For the first time in the demarche,
however, ''Pakistani anxieties'' had been pointedly conveyed by the US
to India.
The US diplomats also went on to
push Musharraf's case to New Delhi: That the Pak President had been responsible
for causing a ''turnaround'' in Islamabad's policy on Afghanistan after
September 11, but that the successes of the hardline MMA in elections in
the Pakistan frontier provinces showed that this policy had weakened him.
It would help, they added, if New
Delhi understood these legitimate interests and concerns of Islamabad and
went slow on its own activities in Afghanistan.
It must testify to the strength
of the growing Indo-US relationship that the American side ''took on board
India's sensitivities and understood that the demarche was inherently erroneous
in nature,'' highly placed sources here said.
For its part, New Delhi is also
said to have decided to let the issue rest, at least for the time being.
It was not brought up during last
week's visit of United States deputy National Security Advisor Steve Hadley
to the capital, and unless things change again, Vajpayee's Principal Secretary
Brajesh Mishra is likely to refrain from doing so during his talks with
his counterpart Condoleezza Rice in Washington from December 9-11.
Nevertheless, New Delhi also seems
to have decided that while it is ready to understand any concerns that
the US has on Afghanistan, it is certainly not willing to accept that Washington
speak on behalf of any other country.
Certainly, the US demarche indicates
a divide within the American establishment on India's role in Afghanistan.
At one level, the US is said to
be congratulatory about New Delhi's efforts at reconstruction in that country,
such as its initiative on building the road from Zaranj to Delaram, from
just within the Afghan border with Iran and linking up to the Kandahar-Herat
highway.
