Author: Dileep Padgaonkar
Publication: Times of India
Date: Sept. 21, 2001
NEW DELHI: Even as India braces
itself to cooperate with the United States in the retaliatory actions it
is about to launch against the Taliban regime, Prime Minister Atal Behari
Vajpayee appears to be distraught over Washington's failure so far to take
India's concerns into account in its overall strategy to combat terrorism.
Alongside, in response to Gen. Pervez Musharraf's intemperate remarks about
India on Wednesday, he has decided to stall the dialogue process between
the two countries.
"It is for America to decide whether
terrorism is a global phenomenon or whether it is restricted to just one
individual. America alone can determine whether it will address the symptom
of terrorism or the system of terrorism", Vajpayee said in the course of
a free-wheeling conversation with this writer on Thursday.
"Afghanistan is a symptom", Vajpayee
said adding, "America will have to look well beyond it. It will have to
look at the sanctuaries provided to terrorists, at the training camps,
at the arms and money flowing into the hands of terrorists if it wants
to get rid of terrorism root and branch." Until now, the Prime Minister
pointed out, "no statements had emanated from Washington to suggest that
the United States, though appreciative of India's offer to support its
war against terrorism, was in a mood to focus on India's bitter experience
of terrorist activities on its soil."
He hoped this will change once the
issue of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi fugitive who the Americans claim master-minded
the attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington
DC, is out of the way.
Throughout the conversation the
Prime Minister dropped no hint whatsoever that he had the slightest regrets
about offering India's support to the United States in its anti-terrorism
drive. He dismissed out of hand news reports that some of his cabinet colleagues
were not too happy with the policy. "Debates and discussions do take place,
as they must:", he said. He then added: " But once we take a position,
everyone falls in line."
Vajpayee said that cooperation with
the United States even at the military level was not something new for
India. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had sought and obtained it in the wake of
the Sino-Indian border war in the early 'sixties.
The prime minister said he was most
impressed by the American response to the terrorist outrages. The political
establishment and the country at large had put aside all differences to
support President Bush in every move he made to provide a suitable riposte
to them.
Vajpayee turned uncharacteristically
combative when he gave his reaction to Gen. Musharraf's tirade against
India in his televised address to the nation on Wednesday night. The military
ruler had claimed that India had offered its military bases and logistical
support to the US because India wants the latter to " get Pakistan declared
a terrorist state, harm its strategic concerns and its Kashmir cause...
and bring a bad name to Pakistan and Islam."
The Prime Minister said that these
allegations were "along expected lines." He recalled that the demand to
declare Pakistan as a terrorist state was a long-standing one. "The US
has declared some Pakistan-based militant organizations as terrorist outfits.
It reviews the list from time to time. Why it has not declared Pakistan
as a terrorist state is because it has not seen terrorism in this part
of the world in a correct perspective."
He cited as an example America's
reaction to the hijacking of the Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar. " They
did say something to the effect that the hijacking was not a good thing.
But nothing more."
Vajpayee said that Musharraf's remarks
in his address to the nation clearly showed that for him the main issue
is about India-Pakistan relations and not about terrorism. "What concerns
him is not terrorism. It is about Kashmir." He went on to add: "How can
he be concerned about terrorism? He has promoted it."
Referring to Musharraf's allegation
that India had no locus standi in Afghanistan and that India's sole interest
was to establish an anti-Pakistan regime in Kabul, Vajpayee said that the
General must not forget in the first place that the United Nations does
not recognise the Taliban government. Secondly, "the emergence of an independent,
democratic, secular Afghanistan is in India's interest and in the interest
of the world." Finally, " it is clear as daylight that we are directly
affected by whatever happens in Afghanistan." The prime minister was doubtless
alluding to the Taliban's role in the hijacking of the Indian Airlines
plane and to the links between Osama bin Laden's organization Al Qaeda
and Pakistan-based terrorist outfits operating in Kashmir.
The prime minister said that Musharraf's
remarks constituted a "serious set back to the India- Pakistan dialogue
process". He ruled out any visit by him or by external affairs minister
Jaswant Singh to Pakistan in the foreseeable future. In his own way Atal
Behari Vajpayee had responded to the general's call to India to "lay off
" Pakistan.