NEW YORK, June 3: As the US envoys get ready to fly to India and Pakistan in a bid to prevent a war over Kashmir, the American lawmakers said on Sunday that country’s war on terrorism would suffer a setback due to the threat of a nuclear conflict in the region.
Senator Bob Graham, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, blamed the United States for not intervening earlier, saying it “sat on the sidelines for over 50 years and let this Kashmir situation get to this point that it is now exploding on us at a time of real crisis.”
Graham said on NBC’s Meet the Press programme that the US had to be “prepared to reassess our military operation in Afghanistan. Can we keep thousands of American troops in the theatre when there is a threat of nuclear war?”
Senator Graham and other leaders of Congress intelligence committees said there was a real possibility that the current standoff over the Kashmir dispute could lead to the use of nuclear weapons.
“I think it’s the most dangerous place in the world,” said Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, A top Republican on the Senate committee. “I hope it will not get to desperation. If it does, I’m afraid we’ll have a nuclear exchange. The worst of all scenarios is an explosive, incendiary place like we’ve never seen.”
Congressman Porter Goss of Florida, chairman of the House intelligence committee, said he did not think “there is sufficient understanding of the people who have nuclear capability of the
consequences of using that nuclear capability. That’s the danger.” Appearing on various news shows on Sunday, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States, Maleeha Lodhi said her country would keep its word to stop terrorist attacks from its soil into occupied Kashmir.
“We came through, we delivered,” when the war on terrorism began, she said on Fox. “The United States, as well as the rest of the international coalition, could not have achieved the significant gains that were achieved in Afghanistan without our help.”
India’s Ambassador to the United States, Lalit Mansingh, said the two sides were running out of diplomatic options. “This is why it’s important for Pakistan to listen to what President Bush and other world leaders are saying: stop the export of terrorism into India,” the diplomat said on Fox News Sunday.
The New York Times said on Monday that both Secretary of Defence Donald H. Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage are to travel to the region this week, but so far there is no sign that they have any dramatic new proposals.
It said that Secretary of State Colin Powell telephoned Gen Musharraf on Saturday to repeat President Bush’s call for the Pakistani leader to stop infiltration by extremists into Indian- held territory, and to emphasize the need for a diplomatic resolution, a senior administration official said.
Mr Powell also kept up a round of phone calls over the weekend to fellow foreign ministers, urging them to do what they could, the official added. Meanwhile, Ms Lodhi tried to allay US fears that Pakistan was moving large numbers of troops from the border with Afghanistan. “As yet, no significant movement has taken place, but, of course, if the situation continues to worsen, we will have to move more,” she told CNN, adding “that’s why the international community must act in every possible way to restrain India from trying to follow a military solution.”
