Author: K.P. Nayar
Publication: The Telegraph
Date: June 8, 2002
Shortly after US envoy Richard Armitage's
nearly two-hour talks with General Pervez Musharraf yesterday, Pakistan's
President called a meeting of his key aides.
Musharraf placed on the table a
top-secret document, which Armitage had handed over to him only a few hours
earlier.
The document listed in great detail
specific instances of how and where Pakistan was continuing to assist Kashmiri
terrorists despite Musharraf's assurance in the last fortnight that such
assistance had ceased.
Pakistan's strongman did not have
to tell those present in the room that Armitage had bluntly told him such
and any other variety of future assistance to terrorists bleeding India
had to stop - not briefly to get the Indians to withdraw their army, but
for ever.
The message, which Armitage carried,
had travelled ahead of him and trickled down within the Pakistani establishment.
So had the reputation of Armitage, a one-time weightlifter with intimidating
shoulders, as one capable of carrying such unpleasant messages.
This was not Musharraf's first encounter
with American ultimatums. A week after the destruction of the World Trade
Center, President George W. Bush gave the head of Pakistan's junta 24 hours
to dump the Taliban or else...
Then Musharraf had followed his
canny instinct for survival and decided largely on his own to join the
US-led coalition against terror.
But now it was different. He wanted
partners in 'crime'. He hoped that those present in the room would share
the responsibility for what Armitage had asked him to do.
The most significant line in Armitage's
press appearance after meeting Musharraf referred to assurances about ending
infiltration, which the American envoy had received in Islamabad yesterday.
"Of course he (Musharraf) wants
to do this, keeping intact the honour and dignity of the nation and the
armed forces," Armitage told reporters.
"Honour and dignity of the armed
forces" was what was at stake at yesterday's crucial meeting the general
had summoned.
Musharraf was never in doubt in
the last one week that he had lost the room for manoeuvre, on which he
had thrived since becoming army chief and then the ruler of Pakistan.
Bush had conveyed to him more or
less the same message which Armitage had bluntly delivered, but the US
President had done it with kid gloves on Wednesday.
In any case, Musharraf succeeded
in covering up his embarrassment during the phone call from the White House
by congratulating Bush on the US victory against Portugal that very day
in the World Cup.
Everyone knows that Bush is a sports
buff. Musharraf had probably heard stories of how national security adviser
Condoleezza Rice became the favourite of the President by discussing baseball
with him.
If Musharraf hoped to soften Armitage's
message by this ploy, it did not work. And yesterday, the Pakistani leader
was facing the music from his aides.
According to accounts trickling
out of Islamabad, chief hawk and foreign minister Abdus Sattar was largely
silent. He had, in any case, decided to put in his papers.
Sattar is one of those who was determined
to fight for what Armitage yesterday called "the honour and dignity of
the nation and the armed forces", meaning fight to teach India a lesson
and wean away Kashmir.
But the surprise at yesterday's
meeting was Lt Gen. Mohammed Aziz, the number three man in the army. He
has stood by Musharraf through thick and thin and is well known in India
as the general at the other end of the telephone line when the general,
then chief of army staff, used expletives against his Prime Minister Nawaz
Sharif over Kargil in a phone talk from Beijing three years ago.
Aziz said he would support an end
to infiltration, but only as a matter of tactics. It would have to resume
when India de- escalated. He was supported by most of the military officials
at the meeting, according to reliable accounts.
Among those who supported Musharraf
was the finance minister, a favourite of the Americans. Foreign secretary
Inamul Haq, normally a man of few words, probably ensured that he would
succeed Sattar by forcefully opposing what was in the mind of his boss
and arguing for a permanent end to infiltration.
The foreign secretary is to retire
shortly and is looking for a post-retirement job.
Yesterday's meeting only complicates
the mission of US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who is now unlikely
to arrive in the subcontinent during the weekend as the Americans had earlier
indicated to his hosts in Islamabad and New Delhi.
A split in the Pakistani establishment
on turning off the terrorist tap permanently means new headaches for the
peacemakers stretching from Tokyo to Washington.
