Thursday, Aug 15, 2002
Thursday, Aug 15, 2002 |
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By Amit Baruah
"We have taken note of his intention to disrupt the peaceful elections in Jammu and Kashmir and to continue his hostile posture towards India. The Government of India will take the necessary measures to counter Pakistan's designs,'' the Foreign Office spokesperson said today. "His denigration of the electoral process in Jammu and Kashmir and indirect exhortations to boycott the elections, coupled with disowning responsibility for terrorist activity sponsored to disrupt the electoral process, indicate that our concerns that Pakistan intends to sabotage these elections are well-founded,'' she said. In what appeared to reciprocate the sentiments expressed by Gen. Musharraf about the Kashmir elections, India directly attacked the recent referendum held by the General to "legitimise" his rule. "After the rigged referendum in Pakistan and constitutional and political manipulations that are going on before the October elections there, one would have hoped that Gen. Musharraf would have been more restrained in his pronouncements on elections in Jammu and Kashmir in September and October,'' the spokesperson said. "Perhaps it is the contrast between free and fair elections in Jammu and Kashmir within the framework of India's democracy and the national elections conducted by a military regime that worries him,'' she said. A direct attack on the legitimacy of elections in Jammu and Kashmir has led to a sharp response from India in which New Delhi has made a number of remarks on the nature of the Pakistani regime and its machinations back home. ``It is becoming increasingly clear, as we had suspected all along, that Gen. Musharraf had no intention of putting an end to the involvement of the Pakistani state and its agencies with terrorism, including cross-border terrorism. Our past scepticism, based on the wide gap between his words and actions, has once again been justified,'' she said. Instead of indicating what further measures he intended to take to end cross-border infiltration and terrorism, in keeping with his commitments of January 12, May 27 and June 6, he has only repeated the time-worn and frayed formulations about so-called "self-determination"' and "core dispute". "The sacred trust that he (Gen. Musharraf) spoke about to the people of Pakistan should really be to establish a moderate and democratic Pakistan, free from military rule and networks of fundamentalist terrorism," she said. India today clearly favoured the creation of a non-Musharraf, non-military regime. Whether this is a long-term view or is simply triggered by the General's negative comments on the Kashmir elections remains to be seen.
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