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President George Bush's off-hand mention of Kashmir in a speech to American troops in Kosovo was no more than an alliterative reference espousing US global values and held no special meaning or message to India and Pakistan, US officials said on Friday.
Responding to the flurry of excited commentary and interpretation on the possible meaning of the reference, one official said it was intended to be a global message without any specific reference to a region or a country. If anything, another official said, it was countries and regions that practised ethnic intolerance and narrow nationalism that should be worried by the speech, and India by its very nature did not fall in that category.
In his speech, Bush had said the US would pursue a world of tolerance and freedom. "From Kosovo to Kashmir, freedom and tolerance is the defining issue for our world... As we head into the 21st century, we will not allow differences to be a license to kill and vulnerability to be an excuse to dominate," Bush said.
After the first flush of indignation, Indian officials are finding the speech quite to their liking since the whole Kashmir issue as seen by the militants and its Pakistani backers is premised on narrow religious fundamentalism and ethnic hatred.
Bush's speech in fact is a throwback to one made by his father almost a decade ago in which he said the United States would not support those "who seek independence in order to replace a far off tyranny with local despotism."
In what came to be known later as the Chicken Kiev speech, the elder Bush had told the Ukrainian legislature: "Freedom is not the same as independence. Americans will not support... those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred."
US officials over the past few days have been alarmed at the growing sensitivity to semantics in both India and Pakistan. Washington itself is pretty careful about every phrase and expression it uses. In a recent encounter, a US official gently corrected a Pakistani diplomat who claimed Washington itself had said the Kashmir issue should be resolved "in accordance with the wishes of the Kashmiri people."
"The expression we use is 'taking into account the wishes of the Kashmiri people.' As you can see, they mean different things," the official clarified.
Washington is also not giving any credence to the latest Pakistani tack suggesting that differences in the Indian leadership led to the failure of the Agra summit. On the contrary, US officials have privately expressed dismay that General Musharraf went to India with a single point agenda.
As a result, after initially celebrating
what it thought was the return of Kashmir to the centerstage due to its
'only Kashmir' tactics in Agra, Pakistan has begun to back off. It is now
claiming Musharraf did not say other subjects could not be tackled without
the Kashmir issue being resolved.
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