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Cornered Musharraf sought Vajpayee's support to lower tensions

Less than a fortnight after he told India to 'lay off', a cornered Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has ironically sought Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's help in lowering regional tension in the wake of the United States-led strikes on Afghanistan.

Musharraf's telephone call to Vajpayee on Monday night for their first dialogue since the Agra summit in July is seen by officials and observers in New Delhi as a sign of the tremendous internal and external pressure that the Pakistani president is under.

At the same time, they believe that his call was more a tactical move than the result of any change of heart about the need for a political solution to the India-Pakistan dispute over Kashmir, one-third of which is controlled by Pakistan and the rest by India.

In a televised address to the nation on September 19 in which he announced Islamabad's support to the US in the war against terrorism, Musharraf said he had taken the decision to prevent India from taking advantage of the situation in Afghanistan by installing in Kabul a government hostile to Pakistan and asked New Delhi to 'lay off'.

Musharraf's decision to support the US in the war against terrorism, particularly that emanating from Afghanistan, has angered fundamentalist Islamic groups in his country, which had supported him when he overthrew the elected government and seized power in October 1999.

Simultaneously, cracks had also begun to appear in the senior hierarchy of the army, evidenced in Musharraf's shuffle of the military and intelligence top brass.

The violence and protest demonstrations on Monday in major cities of Quetta, Lahore, Peshawar, Islamabad and Rawalpindi and his denouncement by protestors reflect the widespread anger among vocal Islamic groups over Pakistan's support to the US military strikes in Afghanistan.

The replacement of three of his trusted generals, including the chief of the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), has in the meanwhile brought to surface the serious differences in the army hierarchy over Musharraf's decision to dump the Taleban regime of Afghanistan, a creation of Islamabad.

The changes have come days after the Pakistan government had announced that the corps commanders had unanimously supported Musharraf's decision to offer 'full support' to the US in the war against terrorism.

Observers pointed out that the reshuffle showed that opposition to Musharraf's decision to support the US was not confined only to fundamentalist groups.

Senior Indian officials believe that more than domestic pressure, which the military dictator appears to have weathered adroitly so far, it was the pressure from the US and Britain that prompted him to speak to Vajpayee.

They noted that following the October one suicide bombing outside the Jammu and Kashmir assembly by the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed extremist group, Prime Minister Vajpayee had, in a strongly worded letter to US President George Bush, said India's patience with Pakistan was running out.

The attack, the worst on civilians in recent times, had left 38 people dead and over 70 injured.

The officials said Vajpayee had conveyed the same message to British Prime Minister Tony Blair when he made a flying visit to New Delhi on Saturday.

They said these messages had apparently worried both Washington and London as they did not want the India-Pakistan dispute over Kashmir to divert the focus of their campaign against Saudi terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden, prime suspect in the US carnage who is being sheltered by the Taleban in Afghanistan.

"Musharraf was apparently told by both the US and Britain to cool the regional temperatures, which prompted him to call Vajpayee," one official said.

Hence, officials and observers believe that Musharraf's appeal to Vajpayee not to heighten regional tension and his promise to 'inquire' into the presence in Pakistan of terrorist groups operating in Jammu and Kashmir were made only to gain some breathing space.

According to Additional Director General of Military Intelligence Maj Gen Richard Khare, there had been no let-up in Pakistan's sponsorship of cross-border terrorism in J&K and the level of violence and infiltration from across the border remained at the same level as before September 11.

Indo-Asian News Service

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