Step back from abyss

The Straits Times, Asia News Network, Singapore

The stand-off between India and Pakistan is becoming alarming. Both have massed troops and tanks along their common border and, according to one report, India has even moved ballistic missiles to Kashmir and ordered villagers in the area to evacuate. A full- fledged war between the two nuclear states would devastate both, not to mention the region.

War is unthinkable, and must be avoided at all costs. Their leaders say they do not seek to go to war, they are only preparing for it in case the other attacks. That may be so, but given the feverish feelings on both sides, each is more than capable of falling into a trap of its own devising, from which there may no easy exit. Friends of both, especially the United States but also regional countries and the Commonwealth, should intervene immediately to offer their good offices to help defuse tensions.

At the very least, the United Nations Security Council should convene soon to devise a formula that might allow both nations to move back from the abyss. Their peoples speak the same languages, share the same history and, in many respects, the same culture. It would be an awful tragedy if they were to set upon each other now with murderous force just because they happen to worship different versions of the same God.

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has been sounding conciliatory, as far as his domestic audience would allow it, and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee must give him more room to maneuver. Gen. Musharraf has briefly detained the founder of Jaish-e-Mohammad, one of the two groups accused by India of complicity in the attack on its parliament, and he has closed the Islamabad offices of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the other group, as he has the facilities of other extremist organizations.

Together with Tameer-e-Nau, Laskhar-e-Taiba was added to the U.S. terrorism list last week, so it is not only India which believes that they are terrorists, not mere freedom fighters as their supporters insist. The Pakistani government needs to do more to rein them in, as well as discipline its Inter-Services Intelligence Agency, which has been accused by both Indian and U.S. officials of covertly supporting a number of regional terror organizations.

But Gen. Musharraf cannot be expected to work miracles in a short period of time. He is in a weaker political position than is Vajpayee, having already angered Pakistani extremists by supporting the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan. Expecting him to do a U-turn immediately after this, and abandon the militant aspects of the Kashmiri struggle at India's behest, would require political skills that even he cannot muster in short order.

New Delhi would be making a mistake if it treated him as Tel Aviv is treating Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat -- as part of the problem, not the solution. Who does Vajpayee want in charge in Islamabad -- Gen. Musharraf or someone else too unpleasant to contemplate?

The U.S. role in resolving this conflict is crucial, as it has considerable leverage with Pakistan, and has friendly ties with India. Islamabad must be told there are no good terrorists and bad terrorists, and if it wants to profit by helping to wipe them out in Afghanistan, it must clean them out at home too. New Delhi must be told that if it wishes to be treated like a major power, it should behave like one, and act responsibly. There is no one model to defeat terrorism, and India should not assume that what works for the U.S. -- attacking terrorists as well as states that harbor them -- applies to it as well. It does not, for the simple reason the other chap has nukes too.