South Asia Still Volatile, U.S. Warns

July 16, 2002

WASHINGTON, July 16 (UPI) -- The United States warned Tuesday that South Asia continues to be "an area of great concern and volatility" as Muslim militants step up their activities in both India and Pakistan.

"The president continues to be deeply concerned about the violence in Kashmir," said White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer commenting on the terrorist attack at a Hindu temple in the disputed Kashmir region over the weekend that killed at least 27 people.

"It continues to be an area of great concern and volatility. And it remains an area of active American diplomatic engagement," he added.

Days before the attack, Indian and Pakistan diplomats at a reception in Washington warned that they feared the militants would launch such an attack.

Militants will try all options available to them to ease the government's security clampdown, including efforts to provoke another war with India, the diplomats said.

They said even a limited war will serve the militants' purpose. Such a war would create enough religious fervor in Pakistan to force the government to postpone, if not cancel, its crackdown on the militants.

India blames Pakistan for allowing militants to continue to be a threat to the region's peace.

Talking to a group of Pakistani journalists at the reception, Indian Ambassador Lalit Mann Singh said Islamabad was allowing militants to cross over into Indian Kashmir to carry out terrorist attacks.

Although acknowledging that Pakistan had "not completely given up using Islamic militants as an instrument of policy toward India," a former Pakistani ambassador, Husain Haqqani, blamed New Delhi for the volatile situation.

"India's refusal to withdraw its threat of war is leading to Pakistan's reluctance to completely abandon this option," said Haqqani, who is now a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

He acknowledges many in Pakistan see the militants as the second line of defense against India. They argue that if Pakistan eliminates the militants, "we will not have anyone to help us fight the Indian army in case of a war."

But people like Haqqani also admit "the militants are now acting on their own and they feel that they can influence the fate of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf as well as the future of India, Pakistan relations."

Western observers say the fact a war may lead to a nuclear holocaust in one of the world's most populous regions does not deter the militants from pursuing their goals.

But it was this fear that forced President George W. Bush to send his defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to the Subcontinent last month to try and persuade India and Pakistan to resolve their differences peacefully.

U.S. negotiators succeeded in getting a commitment from Pakistan to eliminate cross-border attacks in Kashmir, and also from India not to start a conventional war if Pakistan cracks down on the militants.

But despite these commitments, the situation continues to be extremely volatile. Since it was a terrorist attack on the Indian parliament in December that brought more than a million troops along the India-Pakistan border, policy-makers in Washington fear another attack may lead to a war between the two nuclear rivals.

To reduce the threat of war, President Bush is sending Secretary of State Colin Powell back to the region later this month. He will be followed by another high-level visitor, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who played a key role in defusing tensions earlier this year.

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