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Strategies & Market Trends : VOLTAIRE'S PORCH-MODERATED -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (52461)	5/31/2002 11:27:54 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 65232

U.S. Urges Americans to Leave India Fri May 31,10:37 AM ET By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - The State Department on Friday advised all but essential American diplomats in India to leave and urged about 60,000 Americans there to depart as well because of a rising risk of conflict between India and Pakistan. "Tensions have risen to serious levels" and those Americans who chose to remain should steer clear of all border areas between the two countries, the State Department said. About 60,000 U.S. citizens in India also were urged to depart. "Conditions along India's border with Pakistan and in the state of Jammu and Kashmir (news - web sites) have deteriorated," the State Department said in its travel warning. The warning cited artillery exchanges between Indian and Pakistani troops and said terrorist groups linked to the al-Qaida network and implicated in attacks on Americans have attacked and killed civilians. It was not clear how many Americans would take the State Department's advice. The departures will be on commercial flights, which are plentiful, a senior U.S. official said. Dependents of nonessential U.S. personnel in the embassy in New Delhi and U.S. consulates in Calcutta, Mumbai and Chennai also were encouraged to depart at U.S. government expense. India regularly warns the State Department of preparations for war with Pakistan because of the influx of Islamic extremists into the Indian side of disputed Kashmir, said a senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity. While India has not indicated a timetable, the administration takes the warnings seriously. On Thursday, President Bush (news - web sites) took a tough line toward Pakistan, a major ally in the U.S. war against the al-Qaida terror network, demanding that President Pervez Musharraf "live up to his word" and crack down on Islamic extremists' cross-border attacks in Kashmir. While the State Department said it still had no assessment whether Musharraf was making good on his promise last winter to deny Pakistani territory to terrorists, Bush took the initiative as India and Pakistan teetered on the brink. He also deployed top American officials in the region — Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is due there a week from Sunday — and said: "We are making it very clear to both Pakistan and India that war will not serve their interests." Locked in a dispute over the Kashmir border district, and with 1 million troops in a standoff at their frontier, India and Pakistan continued to alarm the world with their troop movements and their rhetoric, their nuclear armaments looming always in the background. Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) will send his deputy, Richard Armitage, to India and Pakistan for talks next Thursday and Friday, with Rumsfeld to arrive shortly afterward, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. "We have no desire to make ourselves the mediator," Boucher said. He said any solution to the dispute over Kashmir depends on dialogue and taking into account the wishes of the people of the territory, he said. Under rules guiding the 1947 partition of British India, overwhelmingly Muslim Kashmir went to Indian control because its Hindu maharajah wanted it. The first India-Pakistan war over Kashmir resulted in a cease-fire line, which became a "line of control" under a 1972 agreement, with Hindu India controlling three-fifths of the fertile, predominantly Muslim Himalayan region. The United Nations (news - web sites) has been on record since the late 1940s that Kashmir's political status should be decided by its people, including a series of Security Council resolutions demanding plebiscites. Pakistan's position is that the resolutions should be implemented. India has rejected the resolutions, for reasons including that no test of the people's will was required in other British India principalities divided because of their leaders' wishes and that Pakistan has not withdrawn from territory it controls. The Bush administration has focused its diplomacy on trying to pry the two armies apart. Powell said Thursday "there is nothing active" for the two sides to discuss in the way of a settlement. And, he said on PBS' "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," he did not think there was a role for the United States or another outside mediator at this point. Asked if nuclear weapons would be used by India or Pakistan if conflict came, Powell said: "I can't answer that question, but I can say this: In my conversations with both sides, especially with the Pakistani side, I have made it clear that this really can't be in anyone's mind." "We are making it very clear to both Pakistan and India that war will not serve their interests," Bush said after a Cabinet meeting. "We are part of an international coalition applying pressure to both parties." In particular, he said, Musharraf must keep his promise to stem attacks across Kashmir's internationally established dividing line. "He must stop the incursions across the line of control. He must do so. He said he would do so," the president said. "We and others are making it clear to him that he must live up to his word." Despite Pakistan's assertion that it already has begun moving troops away from the Afghan-Pakistan border because of the tensions with India, Rumsfeld said U.S. officials had as yet seen no signs of a redeployment. story.news.yahoo.com