- New York (PTI) - Pakistan
should be the "next front" of the current war on terrorism and
its President Pervez Musharraf has some "serious explaining"
to do on what role Pakistan-based groups or its government played in the
attack on Parliament in New Delhi, an American newspaper has said.
-
- Suggesting that Musharraf has to give an explanation
"in the next few days", the New York Post in a blunt editorial
attacking Pakistan said the attack on the Indian parliament was perhaps
an indication that the "next front" of the war on terrorism
should
be Pakistan.
-
- Musharraf needs to know that should he choose a wrong
path, the consequences could be "dire".
-
- "Last week's suicide attack on India's parliament
by Islamic terrorists wasn't just a murderous attack. It was a gesture
of defiance by Islamic terrorist enemy that had already declared war on
the West," the paper said.
-
- The paper said Pakistan still "hosts, trains and
arms terrorist groups like the one beleived to have carried out the attack
on Parliament even after having the "good sense" to withdraw
support to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
-
- It further said that the Pakistani government had both
the means and the obligation to prevent its territory from becoming a place
of refuge for terrorists.
-
- The growing tensions between India and Pakistan after
the attack on Parliament is also being reflected in the American media.
The New York Times said Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's speech in
Parliament keeping all options open was a warning to Pakistan's military
rulers and to countries in the US-led coalition to press for action against
militants acting openly in Pakistan.
-
- The Washington Post suggested that Musharraf should act
for the sake of Pakistan's stability, both against the hundreds of fleeing
al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters and against terrorist organisations accused
by India of carrying out the attack on Parliament.
-
- "Fortunately India's democratic government has
reacted
to the assault with admirable restraint. Though it has as much right as
the US or Israel to defend itself against the extremists, it has so far
refrained from acting while waiting to see what Musharraf does," the
Post said.
-
- Copyright © 2001 Press Trust of India Ltd.
All rights reserved.
-
- ___
-
-
- Wall Street Journal Says India Has Right
To Retaliate Against Pakistan
- By Vasantha Arora, Indo-Asian News Service
12-21-1
-
- Washington (IANS) - A leading
U.S. daily has described the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament
as a brazen attempt to wipe out the political leadership of a democracy,
and said "India has the right to retaliate".
-
- The Wall Street Journal said that not since the bombing
by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) of Britain's former prime minister
Margaret
Thatcher's hotel in Brighton, England, has there been such a daring
attempt.
-
- The editorial, by deputy editorial features editor Tunku
Varadarajan, makes out a strong case for New Delhi to act against the
Pakistan-based
terrorists, and says the September 11 rules should apply to India as
well.
-
- It asserted that: "India has the right to retaliate
in the manner and time of its choosing."
-
- What should India do? After the World Trade Centre was
attacked, the U.S. asked the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden. So India
must -- and surely will -- ask Pakistan to hand over the leaders of
Jaish-e-Mohammed
for trial.
-
- If Pakistan refuses, what is the difference between
Pakistan
President Pervez Musharraf's regime and that of the Taliban?
-
- Varadarajan said, India asserts, and the U.S. knows,
that the best way to prevent an escalation of conflict in the Indian
subcontinent
is not to lecture India on restraint, nor even to advise India to sacrifice
its democracy on the altar of a prevailing expediency, but to compel
Pakistan
to mend its uncivilised ways.
-
- Urging the U.S. to side with India, the editorial said,
the matter needs urgent attention now, as hundreds of Al Qaida fighters,
having crossed unmolested from Afghanistan into Pakistan, regroup there
for a next bout of jihad -- against India.
-
- New Delhi might consider taking a leaf from Israel's
book and resort to targeted killings of known anti-Indian terrorists in
Pakistan. It has undercover agents on the ground and should, by now, have
acquired the ruthlessness to set them on its most visceral enemies.
-
- Turning to the attack itself, which left 14 people dead,
including the terrorists, the editorial recounted that subsequent
investigations
carried out by India have revealed that the attackers belonged to the
Jaish-e-Mohammed,
or the "Army of Mohammed," an anti-India terrorist group that
not only recruits and operates openly in Pakistan, but is funded, trained
and incited by that country's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
-
- This is the same terrorist group that car-bombed the
Indian state legislature in Srinagar, in Kashmir, October 1, killing 40
people.
-
- Unsurprisingly -- for he is a charlatan and a dissembler
-- Musharraf condemned the assault on India's Parliament within hours of
its containment, the editorial said
-
- But when faced with evidence of Jaish-e-Mohammed's
authorship
of the terrorist act, the Pakistani military dictator grew fractious and
belligerent, warning India not to engage in retaliatory
"misadventure."
-
- For good measure, the president's spokesman called for
a "joint investigation" into December 13 events -- meaning, here,
that Pakistani investigators, most likely from the ISI, would join Indian
police in an inquiry into an act of terror in which the ISI had had a
hand!
-
- Not content, however, with one risible suggestion, he
uttered another, that it was India itself that had orchestrated the attack
on its own Parliament, and killed its own policemen, in order to tarnish
the image of Pakistan.
-
- The tenor of this last assertion should not surprise
us. It is, after all, of a piece with the many declarations across the
Muslim world made in reaction to the recent bin Laden videotape (released
by the U.S. as evidence of bin Laden's involvement in the September
attacks).
-
- Every shred of evidence that discredits an Islamic
society
-- or those who would act in the name of Islam -- is an American fakery,
done to slander Muslims, or a Jewish counterfeit, or, as here, a monstrous
Indian / Hindu trick.
-
- ("American kosher deli," incidentally, is the
wry phrase employed by Western diplomats in the region to describe the
popular Pakistani perception of a hostile, anti-Islamic triumvirate --
to wit, the U.S., Israel and New Delhi.)
-
- While urging restraint, the U.S government has recognised
that "India has a legitimate right to self-defence."
-
- Naturally, New Delhi needs to consider the implications
of its actions on the region -- retaliatory strikes on terrorist camps
in Pakistan could ignite a wider, possibly nuclear, war -- but that should
not provide an alibi for doing nothing.
-
- Varadarajan, who was raised in New Delhi and Lucknow
but went to study in London, said Pakistan must not be allowed to practice
nuclear blackmail on India, whereby it bleeds the latter with an undeclared
terrorist war, while warning that any Indian riposte -- any Indian
assertion
of self-defence -- could lead to a nuclear escalation.
-
- The breaking off of diplomatic ties with Pakistan should
also be considered actively. Doesn't the Pakistani regime have a
responsibility
to ponder the consequences of its actions before conniving in an attack
on the heart of Indian democracy?
-
- Perhaps Musharraf has the same contempt for India's
democracy
as he has for Pakistan's. This is where the U.S. must take India's
side.
-
- Instead of demanding restraint from India -- which has
shown that it possesses that quality in abundance -- it must order
Musharraf
to restrain terrorist cadres that flourish in Pakistan.
-
- Ultimately, the real threat to India comes from the
absence
of democracy in Pakistan. Musharraf and his coterie are accountable to
no one. He may be regarded as an ally in the war in Afghanistan, but that
war is now near its end.
-
- The U.S. should read him the riot act, impressing on
him the need to shut down all terrorist activity in his country,
Varadarajan
commented.
|
