August 21, 2002	Wednesday	Jamadi-us-Saani 11,1423

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NEW DELHI, Aug 20: India on Tuesday hardened its position on rapprochement with Islamabad after Defence Minister George Fernandes said that troops may have to stay on the tense border with Pakistan beyond October, a change in the calendar that could surprise US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, due to arrive here on Friday, officials and news reports said.

Star TV quoted Fernandes as saying that cross border infiltration in Kashmir was still going on forcing the reconsideration of any easing of the military deployment.

Interestingly, US Secretary of State Colin Powell is among several global interlocutors who have said publicly that the military standoff in South Asia would abate after October after Indian-backed elections in Jammu and Kashmir as well as Pakistan’s own parliamentary polls are due to be over.

Diplomats said the stretching of the date to ease the standoff beyond October could be linked to the crucial polls in India’s Gujarat state which appear to have hit the doldrums because the Indian election commission does not see them being held in a communally charged atmosphere.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has challenged the inevitable postponement of the Gujarat elections in which both the president and the Supreme Court have now been dragged in as arbiters.

India has never officially acknowledged a primarily Western conjecture that its standoff with Pakistan was likely to ease after October.

In fact there were fears being voiced in official quarters that if the present trend of alleged cross border infiltration persists the next SAARC summit in Islamabad could itself become a casualty.

Speaking from Kathmandu, meanwhile, Indian foreign ministry spokesperson Nirupama Rao said there was absolutely no possibility of a thaw taking place during a foreign ministers’ meeting of the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation under way there.

Moreover, Indian External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha, who has declined to meet Pakistan’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Inam ul Haq for bilateral talks in Nepal, will move on to Bangladesh on a bilateral visit on Aug 23, the day Armitage visits New Delhi.

Coupled with the fact that Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister Lal Krishan Advani, seen as an anti-Pakistan hawk, has also cancelled his own visit this week to the United States, reportedly for want of desirable hospitality, there are several signals being sent up to be divined.

“Murmurs of disapproval from the foreign policy establishment and saner counsel from advisers has resulted in Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani cancelling a planned visit to the United States next week,” wrote the Times of India correspondent in Washington. Mr Advani will however go ahead with a scheduled trip to the United Kingdom on Aug 21.

“The deputy prime minister appears to have jettisoned his US yatra after it became increasingly clear that he would be diluting his political and diplomatic equity with a hopelessly non-productive sortie. The only firm engagement during the visit was a private community function to unveil a bust of India’s federalist icon Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in New Jersey,” the newspaper said.

It said Indian External Affairs Ministry officials privately chafed at the inevitable comparisons that would have been made between the extensive attention given by the Bush administration and the US media to China’s heir apparent Hu Jintao, and the non-reception for Advani.

Indian officialdom also made no effort to set up a meeting for Mr Advani with President Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, with one official explaining that “our leaders are not the Crawford types.” He was referring to the lack of conviviality characterizes the rather starchy Indian leadership, better known for their formality and good graces than backslapping bonhomie.

On Tuesday, in a separate dispatch, the Times of India wrote about the Armitage visit: “The bonhomie that marked Armitage’s first couple of visits to India in the heady days soon after the Bush dispensation took over is now beginning to wane. The two sides differ sharply on Pakistan’s military and its role in the war on terrorism.”

It said Washington sees Pakistan’s military as a frontline ally, even ahead of its civilian, democratic institutions, because of the traditional preponderance of military influence in the country’s public life.