The Hindu : Jack Straw to visit India, Pak.

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, May 23, 2002

International

International

Jack Straw to visit India, Pak.

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON MAY 22. The British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, will visit India and Pakistan next week in a bid to avert what he termed ``very real and very disturbing'' possibility of a war between two nuclear neighbours.

But he made it clear that he was not carrying any ``pre-cooked peace plan'' and in the end it was for India and Pakistan to defuse the crisis, which, he warned, could have ``potentially devastating consequences''.

With the United States Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, and the European Union Commissioner for external relations, Chris Patten, also scheduled to visit the region, Mr. Straw's visit is being portrayed here as part of a coordinated Western diplomatic offensive to get the two nuclear powers back from the ``brink''.

A Foreign Office spokesman pointed out that these high-level visits reflected the ``anxiety'' over the heightening tension in India-Pakistan relations, and said that Mr. Straw would call for ``de-escalation'' in his talks in New Delhi and Islamabad.

Mr. Straw said the international community was watching the situation with ``mounting concern'' and its task was to ``assist'' the two countries in finding a solution. But recognising Indian sensitivities on foreign intervention, he emphasised that ``fundamentally this is an issue that can only be resolved by the parties concerned.'' Given the fact that both India and Pakistan had ``talked publicly about a possible nuclear exchange'' the situation was fraught with risks and was of ``profound concern to the whole international community''.

Officials were quoted as saying that a nuclear conflict was a ``trigger'' away — a line echoed in the media with The Times and The Daily Telegraph, in particular, taking up the threat of a ``nuclear war'' in screaming front-page headlines.

Fears were further fuelled by comments from the Pakistani and Indian High Commissioners on the BBC's Newsnight programme on Tuesday. While the Pakistani envoy, Abdul Kader Jaffer, said the two countries were ``very close'' to a war, the Indian High Commissioner, Ronen Sen, agreed with the interviewer that the region was on the ``brink'' of a military conflict, with all diplomatic options getting rapidly exhausted.

Scary scenarios, fed to newspapers by unnamed officials, spoke of India first attacking Pakistan in retaliation against terrorist attacks; Pakistan hitting back and India then responding with greater force provoking a nuclear response from Pakistan.

India would survive the strike and retaliate with its own nuclear weapons. Seasoned observers, however, dismissed these as ``fantasy'' scenarios and Indian diplomats sounded irritated by such ``scare-mongering''. There was annoyance in Asian circles over what one observer described as the West's ``patronising'' attitude suggesting that third world countries were not responsible enough to handle nuclear weapons.

Diplomatic sources also questioned attempts to ``restrain'' India while not doing enough to rein in Pakistan which, they said, had not delivered on any of the assurances contained in Gen. Pervez Musharraf's ``historic'' January 12 speech.

``It is Pakistan that they need to talk to,'' one diplomat said amid widespread scepticism about the outcome of Mr. Straw's visit.

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