June 14, 2002	Friday	Rabi-us-Sani 2, 1423

NEW DELHI, June 13: There is nothing like the twin threats of nuclear war and global terrorism to redraw the map of international diplomacy.

And with both lurking behind South Asia’s latest crisis over Kashmir, the United States is shedding a reluctance to get involved in resolving the conflict while also breaking down Indian taboos against outside interference in the region.

“The Americans are here,” The Times of India proclaimed this week as US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld arrived to try to avert war between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan.

“As George W. would no doubt drawl: Make no mistake, the US is here to mediate. Of course the Americans will say, as will the Indians, that this is only to ensure the subcontinent doesn’t turn into a nuclear hellhole.

“And yet, there are enough signals that the US is slowly, but surely, enlarging its role,” it said in an editorial.

The United States and India were on opposite ends during the Cold War, with Washington using Pakistan to fight against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, while New Delhi, then committed to socialist policies, looked to Moscow as its natural ally.

All that has changed, first with the September 11 attacks on the United States, and more recently a threat of a fourth war between India and Pakistan, which held nuclear tests in 1998.

“What is significant is that there is no major (domestic) opposition to American involvement in India,” said Indian political analyst Mahesh Rangarajan. “Somewhere there is an acceptance of a role for the US.”

“Post Sept 11, the nature of US involvement in this region has changed,” he added.

WASHINGTON SHIFTS TOWARDS INDIA: The US involvement has been far from straightforward, as Washington — in the Indian view — first veered towards Pakistan, then steered down the middle between the two rivals and then, recently, shifted, albeit fractionally, towards India.

After the Sept 11 attacks, Washington turned to Pakistan to help it launch its ‘war on terrorism’ in Afghanistan and hunt down Al Qaeda militants who it held responsible.

India, which had been cosying up to Washington since the Cold War ended, was enraged by the new US-Pakistan axis and sulked with what one observer dubbed the anger of a spurned mistress whose lover had gone back to his first wife.

Fearing that any conflict could escalate into the world’s first nuclear war, as well as undermine its campaign in Afghanistan, the United States dived in.

UN RESOLUTIONS: The Kashmir dispute is a legacy of the partition of the Subcontinent into Pakistan and India at independence from Britain in 1947.

Islamabad has long pressed for implementation of UN resolutions calling for a plebiscite to allow the people of Kashmir to decide whether they wanted to join India or Pakistan.

A full UN Security Council resolution on this was signed in 1951 by four of the five permanent council members, including the United States. Russia abstained along with India.

But India, which fears that losing Kashmir would encourage separatist movements which could ultimately dismember the country, has dismissed the UN resolutions as outdated.

And until now, it has fiercely resisted any outside mediation or interference and says the Kashmir dispute is a purely bilateral issue to be resolved with Pakistan.

Slowly that is changing.

With senior Indian and Pakistani ministers speaking only through insults hurled at each other in televised declarations, it fell to the United States to act as go-between.

The Times of India editorial, arguing that it was about time India came to terms with the “dreaded ‘M’ word”, was one of the early signs New Delhi may be coming to terms with US mediation.

Then on Wednesday, Rumsfeld said India and the United States were looking at using electronic sensors to monitor what India calls movement of militants across the Line of Control into occupied Kashmir.

“The thing on ground sensors is very significant,” said Rangarajan, calling it a “small but significant shift in terms of third-party involvement” in the Kashmir dispute.

Analysts and diplomats say Washington is however likely to focus on averting war and on getting India and Pakistan to talk rather than untangling the fundamental issues behind the dispute.

“In the last analysis, people, countries sort out their own problems,” Rumsfeld told a news conference in Islamabad.—Reuters