The Hindu : Make action evident, U.S. tells Musharraf

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jun 08, 2002

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Make action evident, U.S. tells Musharraf

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

WASHINGTON JUNE 7. The United States continues to maintain that the Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf, must stop terrorist infiltration across the Line of Control in Kashmir on a "permanent basis,'' and when this becomes clear, Washington will look to India to reciprocate.

"...the goal that affects the relationship and the situation in Kashmir is to stop infiltration across the LoC on a permanent basis. And as that becomes clear, as that becomes evident, we look to the Indians to reciprocate,'' the U.S. State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said.

The United States was talking to Gen. Musharraf on how to make the checking of terrorist infiltration effective, Mr. Boucher said. "He (Musharraf) has made clear repeatedly that there won't be any support from Pakistani-controlled territory for terrorist activity. And so what we're talking to him about is how to make that effective, and in some ways how to make that evident to all of us that that kind of activity has ceased.''

With the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, having finished his talks in Pakistan and on his way to India, the Bush administration said the situation in the subcontinent was still very tense, although somewhat better. "... the situation does remain very tense, but there are elements of progress, some marginal progress, that can be recorded,'' Mr. Boucher said, defending the Department's travel warnings and advisories on India and Pakistan. "On the one hand, you have a very tense situation that means that we strongly urge our own people and other Americans to depart; at the same time, we are in there, Deputy Secretary Armitage is in there, trying to make it better.''

The Bush administration is not responding to queries on the subject of joint patrolling along the LoC. There have been media reports of the administration here leaning towards some kind of a U.S.-British helicopter force monitoring the LoC. "I don't really have anything to say at this moment,'' Mr. Boucher said.

Meanwhile, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Myers, has been quoted in Brussels as saying that to his knowledge, there is no American intention of offering the use of American troops to monitor the LoC. Also, in what seems to be routine planning, the American military has drawn up plans to reposition its troops operating in and around Pakistan, in the event of a war in South Asia.

PTI reports:

The U.S. intelligence agencies have picked up information indicating that the Al-Qaeda terrorists are planning to assassinate Gen. Musharraf. An intelligence report from Southwest Asia, which has not been confirmed, stated that the activists of the terror outfit, Al-Qaeda, were trying to conduct the assassination to precipitate the conflict between Pakistan and India, The Washington Times reported today. ``The Al-Qaeda views a conflict as good for the organisation. The war would make it harder for Pakistan to cooperate with the U.S. military and intelligence forces now searching for Al-Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan and Pak.''

On the outfit's efforts to exploit the Indo-Pak. standoff, the U.S. Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said ``it would be, you know, most unfortunate if someone saw it in their interest to create incidents on either side of the LoC or the border in the hope that those incidents would be judged to be by the other party and thereby incite people to activities they would otherwise avoid.''

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