Powell criticised for remarks on Kashmir
Powell was criticised for remarks on Kashmir in a leading daily
New York, Oct 23 (PTI): US Secretary of State Colin Powell has come in for sharp criticism in a leading daily for terming Kashmir as the core issue between New Delhi and Islamabad, which, it said, has alienated a powerful and increasingly important for India.
The New York Post column also flayed Powell for trying to bolster the Musharraf regime and for saying moderate Taliban could be part of a future governing set-up in Afghanistan.
Powell "gratuitously alienated our powerful and increasingly important Indian allies by saying Kashmir was the at the core of the tension in the region and that America was open to expanding military ties to Pakistan.
"After all, while the legalities of the Kashmir could be debated endlessly... Pakistan has... actively sponsored terror groups in Kashmir, including some linked to (Osama) bin Laden's al Qaeda," popular columnist Jonathan Foreman said.
Powell, he said, could have even hinted that if Pakistan doesn't start being a more cooperative ally very quickly - if it doesn't choose between "our friendship and ties to Taliban - if it doesn't stop backing Islamic terror against India - then America might become so friendly that it gives India full permission to do whatever that country thinks necessary to resolve all its problems with Islamabad."
Powell, the column said, should have told Pakistan that Washington now has "every reason to become much, much friendlier with its rival, India."
"The message is clear: Pakistan's disastrous interference in Afghanistan is forgiven. Yet the truth is that we really don't need to be this nice to Pakistan - and shouldn't be.
"India, after all, is a democratic, pluralistic and secular nation with which the US has much in common - including being a victim of terrorism, rather than, like Pakistan, a consistent sponsor," Foreman said.
In an attempt to bolster the Pakistani regime's inadequate support for US military operations in Afghanistan, Powell said some "ill-conceived and possibly dangerous" things to Pakistan President Gen Pervez Musharraff, "the leader of the military junta in Islamabad" and pushed "our diplomacy in the wrong direction," it said.
By the time he had left the region, Foreman noted, shells were falling once again in the high Himalayan passes as Pakistan and India mobilised troops. And everyone - India, Pakistan and the Afghan Northern Alliance - was more convinced than ever that America would somehow betray or fail them while giving one of the others some special influence in post-war Afghanistan.
This is what happens when the means is mistaken for the end - when coalition-building becomes more important than the point of the coalition: winning the war against terror, the article said.
Terming his recent whirlwind South Asia visit as "unfortunate," the column said Powell, for all his virtues, may be the wrong man to be running the US foreign policy at this time.
It strongly criticised Powell's remarks that the new government in Afghanistan include "moderate" elements of Taliban whom it described as "the ultra-fundamentalist ruling militia that Pakistan sponsored, armed and continues to favour - despite the fact that the Taliban voluntarily shelters and assists Osama bin Laden."
This, Foreman said, comes as "we let down the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, declining to bomb Taliban forces near alliance troops - again out of deference to Pakistani sensibilities."
"Like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan has decided to become our ally only in a nominal sense, an 'ally' whose interests and actions are often hostile to our own. And its 'help' in this campaign - which doesn't include the use of key bases for military operations except for search and rescue - simply isn't worth this degree of compromise."
All the US needs from Pakistan, the column said, is the use of its airspace and that is not something that Pakistan is in any position to deny it.
The State Department, it says, will often argue that Pakistan must be kept sweet because it has a small number of atom bombs - "ones that might even work." And an alienated Pakistan could conceivably supply nuclear devices to its Islamic terrorist friends.
"This is obviously a disturbing scenario. But if we really believed that the Pakistanis were inclined to do such a thing, we would have the right and obligation to destroy those weapons immediately and by any means we felt appropriate," the column said.
The article noted that it wouldn't be easy for Musharraf to take a stronger stand against the Taliban and for America, of course. "His country is a corrupt, impoverished and profoundly unstable hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism and anti-Americanism."
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