Spat between India and Pakistan high on Powell's agenda

By PETER POPHAM

ISLAMABAD - United States Secretary of State Colin Powell flies to South Asia tomorrow, and one of his chief concerns will be to stop a spat between India and Pakistan billowing into an unwelcome second front in the war on terrorism.

On October 1 an attack by a fidayeen - or suicide squad - on the State Legislature in Srinagar, summer capital of Indian Kashmir, left 38 dead and at least 70 injured. It was the first spectacular terrorist action since September 11, and the Indian authorities claimed that it was the work of a militant group called Jaish-e-Muhammad (Army of the Prophet Mohammed).

Immediately after the attack, people who said they were from that group telephoned media offices in India and claimed responsibility.

An unnamed senior official in the Indian Government told the New York Times a real danger remained that, if another big attack were to be made, India would respond by striking at militant training camps across the so-called Line of Control, the de facto border between Indian and Pakistan-ruled Kashmir.

The senior official said that the US and Britain "have been told very clearly that there is a limit to our patience".

One of the first casualties of events that followed from September 11 has been Indo-Pakistani relations.

Rescued from a historic low by an ultimately fruitless but mostly warm-spirited summit meeting between Pakistan's military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in July, they have now plummeted to a danger point not seen since Pakistan's invasion of Indian territory in the mountainous region of Kargil in the spring of 1999.

That mountain conflict brought the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours, which have fought three wars since independence in 1947, to the brink of a fourth.

But skilful Indian diplomacy persuaded the world that India was the wronged party, and ever since India's star has risen while Pakistan's has sunk.

The climax of the Indo-American honeymoon came with US President Bill Clinton's visit to India in February of last year. His tacked-on, half-day visit to Pakistan by contrast had all the lustre of a trip to the divorce court. September 11 changed all that.

Pakistan, a military dictatorship, was no more enticing than before, but its support in any US conflict with Afghanistan's Taleban was seen as absolutely vital.

Musharraf, the former commando whose strongest quality is decisiveness, wasted no time in giving it. Domestic trouble ensued, but suddenly the world was beating a path to his door.

Sanctions were lifted, debt rescheduled, new aid promised.

And India, its rapid offer of help to the US spurned or at least ignored, stood glowering on the sidelines.

India's angry position is clear: Pakistan, embraced as a key part of the solution to the terrorist menace, is actually a key part of the problem.

"Pakistan," said Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh on BBC TV, "is the epicentre of terrorism."

The mayhem at Srinagar was almost certainly caused by a militant group with roots, recruits and training camps in Pakistan.

India regards America's pursuit of the Taleban and Osama bin Laden as myopic, because it ignores the long terror campaign in Kashmir. But from the US perspective, this is the worst possible moment to raise the Kashmir question.

Powell must try to repair the damage.

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