Powell Leaves
India Empty-handed, Says Kashmir on World Agenda
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Colin
Powell with Prime Minister Vajpayee
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By
Zafarul-Islam Khan, IOL South Asia Correspondent
NEW
DELHI, July 28 (IslamOnline) – U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell
left India for Pakistan Sunday morning, July 28, after futile meetings
with Indian leaders. Two earlier western emissaries, UK Foreign
Secretary Jack St, U.K. Foreign Secretary Jack
Straw and European Union foreign affairs chief Javier Solana had
returned in a similar fashion.
India
has refused to give even an inch on its stand that it will not enter
into negotiations with Pakistan until infiltration, or what India
terms as “cross-border terrorism”, totally and permanently comes
to an end.
Although
the U.S. has conceded that infiltration has ebbed, but has not stopped
completely, yet it urged India to do good its part of the bargain
after Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf honors his part of
the bargain.
During
the western and especially American mediation last month to
de-escalate tension between India and Pakistan, it was agreed that
Pakistan will stop infiltration from its side into Indian-administered
Kashmir, while India will resume negotiations with Pakistan about
Kashmir and other contentious issues as soon as this was achieved.
After
initially admitting that infiltration has stopped, India now maintains
that the infiltration has not stopped and therefore there is no
question of coming to the table unless and until infiltration stops
“completely and permanently.”
Furthermore,
India has been pressuring the U.S. in vain to declare Pakistan a
“terrorist state.”
The
fact is that India wants to keep the pressure on Pakistan until the
elections are held in Kashmir next October or shortly thereafter.
India says that Pakistan is trying to sabotage elections.
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Colin
Powell with the Indian Foreign Minister Sinha
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Pakistan-based
militant organizations have said that they will kill anybody who takes
part in the elections. India, on its part, is very keen to hold
elections in order to claim afterwards that peace is back in Kashmir
and there is no Kashmiri problem.
Indian
foreign minister Yashwant Sinha also rejected Powell’s suggestion to
let in foreign observers at the time of the elections in Kashmir.
Sinha said India has an independent and powerful Election Commission
and it does not need any foreign help in this regard. But he conceded
that foreigners and Delhi-based diplomats can come to Kashmir in their
“private” capacity and observe elections.
India
was silent on another suggestion by Powell: to set free political
prisoners in Kashmir before the elections. A number of top
secessionist leaders, like Ali Shah Geelani, Yasin Malik and Sheikh
Abdul Aziz, in addition to the second rung of the Hurriyat conference
leadership, like GM Bhat and Altaf Fantoosh, are now in prisons as
India apprehends that these people will sabotage the elections.
The
Hurriyat Conference has been successfully appealing to the Kashmiri
people to boycott elections ever since the heavily-rigged elections of
1987 which led to the outbreak of violence in Kashmir in 1988 when
Kashmiri youth concluded that it was “bullet” time since the
“ballot” has failed them.
Before
leaving for Islamabad, Powell told a press conference in his Delhi
hotel that Kashmir is now on the “world agenda.” This echoes the
Pakistani point of view while India maintains that Kashmir is a
bilateral issue which should be discussed and settled bilaterally
under the Shimla Agreement of 1972.
Powell
also said that the U.S is not playing the role of a mediator and it is
not interfering in other countries’ affairs.
This
was the U.S. secretary of state’s third visit to the subcontinent
since the Indo-Pak relations deteriorated in the wake of the terrorist
attack on the Indian parliament on December 13 last year.
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