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Strategies & Market Trends : India Coffee House -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JPR who wrote (10724)	2/18/2000 12:32:00 PM
From: JPR	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12475

Clinton is put in the position of the rope in a tug of war between India and pakistan. Just wink & feign anger& call off the visit and tell them to get lost, go to ****, take a walk, grow up, behave like responsible adults, stop nagging & put their act together---see a humor in this--just kidding--JPR Vajpayee warns Clinton against Pakistan visit dawn.com PARIS, Feb 17: Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, in an interview published on Thursday, warned U.S. President Bill Clinton against visiting Pakistan next month during his planned tour of South Asia. Vajpayee told the French daily Le Figaro that Clinton certainly had a right to stop in Pakistan during his trip to India and Bangladesh in the week of March 20. "But a visit to Pakistan while this country is under military dictatorship and sponsors Islamic terrorism around the world would be very badly received by Indian public opinion," he said. Clinton offered on Wednesday to mediate between Pakistan and India in their dispute over Kashmir and left open the possibility of visiting Pakistan. Asked about a possible Clinton offer to mediate on Kashmir, Vajpayee said the United States knew that New Delhi would not grant it independence and wanted Islamabad to hand over the one-third of the region it controlled. As for arms control, Vajpayee said India was not against signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) but the U.S. Senate's vote against it had turned Indian public opinion against it as well. Vajpayee said that Pakistan had betrayed India by continuing to send, whom he said were, militants into the disputed region. He said that India hoped to keep peace talks open with Pakistan even though General Pervez Musharraf's government had been supplying Kashmiri Mujahideen with more and more weapons and explosives since the military takeover in October. "Pakistan must show good will first by ceasing to send terrorists into (our) territory," said the Indian prime minister, complaining his goodwill meeting with his deposed Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif in Lahore last year had been ignored. Pakistani authorities recently approved the diversion of an Indian plane, he told the Figaro, explaining "we cannot have a dialogue in these kind of conditions." On the question of nuclear arms, Vajpayee reiterated that India holds nuclear weapons as a deterrent, not a threat. But, he told the Figaro, "if (Pakistan) thinks we're going to wait for it to launch the first bomb, it is wrong. If Pakistan wants to avoid a nuclear holocaust, it should accept our proposal for a mutual pact against nuclear aggression." Vajpayee said India also had some "serious disagreements" with China which they were trying to resolve through dialogue. As French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine arrived in New Delhi for a two-day visit, Vajpayee told the Figaro that France had to "make a strategic decision between India, a great democratic power and Pakistan, a little country under military dictatorship." JASWANT SINGH: Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh told AFP that Clinton's pre-condition that both countries would have to agree to mediation effectively ruled out any such role for the United States. "Mr. Clinton has said that he would be involved only if the two countries are agreeable to the idea, and the two countries are not," Singh said. Another senior foreign ministry official expanded on Singh's comments, saying Clinton's remarks were an implicit recognition of New Delhi's opposition to outside mediation. "What Clinton has said is that the US will not intervene and has no plans to intervene unless both countries ask for it," said the official, who declined to be identified. "He has shown sensitivities to our concern that there is no scope for third-party involvement of any kind in Indo-Pakistani issues," the official said, reaffirming that India had "no plan" to request US help.-Agencies