INDIA’s conduct of its diplomatic relations with Pakistan has lately been particularly brash and hamhanded. The latest example of provocative behaviour was provided by the expulsion of the acting Pakistan high commissioner in New Delhi by accusing him of indiscreet conduct and filing on FIR against him under the controversial Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA).

The senior diplomat was accused of having provided funds to two leaders of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) of Kashmir who had called on him. He, along with four members of his staff, were declared persona non grata and asked to leave the country within 48 hours.

Pakistan, which acted with remarkable restraint when the high commissioner himself was similarly expelled some time ago, decided to respond in kind this time, and expelled the acting Indian high commissioner and four members of his staff. The missions of the two countries, which normally carry a heavy burden of diplomatic and consular duties, have been severely depleted.

Following a similar unpleasant phase in their relations in 1991, the foreign secretaries of the two countries had agreed on a formal code of conduct for the treatment of each other’s diplomatic personnel. Unfortunately, the code has frequently been violated by both sides with diplomats being shadowed by intelligence personnel and even being roughed up at times and detained without any justifiable reason.

New Delhi has also taken its own time to grant visas for a fresh batch of Pakistani diplomats to fill the vacancies in New Delhi and the Pakistani authorities too have done likewise.

While this favourite game of diplomatic tit-for-tat is being played out, the road, rail and air links between the two countries continue to remain suspended. There were expectations that the regular routes for travel will be restored with the beginning of the new year. This has not happened.

Following the withdrawal of the troops from the India- Pakistan border after a ten-month period of military stand-off, there were expectations that the tempers on both sides will begin to cool off. There are no signs yet of this happening. Indeed, with India increasingly hardening its attitude towards Pakistan, the prospects of normal, neighbourly relations between the two countries seem very remote. The chances of the resumption of a dialogue to resolve bilateral disputes even more so. It sounds almost utopian to recall that Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India had declared in the Indian parliament on September 12, 1958, that “the best course to decide any outstanding matter (between India and Pakistan) is to refer it to an independent party or tribunal... There is no other way.” Today, New Delhi refuses to accept mediation for the settlement of the Kashmir dispute.

It also seems like a distant echo from another world that, according to the late Prof Jamiluddin ahmad (who was particularly close to the higher echelons of the Muslim League and who had compiled Mr Jinnah’s statements and speeches) at least on two occasions (October 14, 1944, and November 15, 1946) the Quaid had gone on record saying that after independence and partition, India and Pakistan will proclaim a sort of “Monroe Doctrine”, implying that the security and integrity of one would be of concern to the other, like the equation between the US, Canada and other countries of the American continent and that one state would cooperate with the others in the event of an attack from outside.

Today the reality is that the Indian prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, decided not to visit Pakistan to attend the SAARC summit last January which led to the summit’s indefinite postponement. Following the famous Agra summit, Mr Vajpayee had more than once affirmed that he had accepted President Pervez Musharraf’s invitation to visit Pakistan and that he would do so at an early date. But the promise of a return visit to Pakistan is now all but forgotten. Apparently, Mr Vajpayee is under pressure from the militant elements in his own party and government not to soften his tough posture towards Pakistan.

Mr Vajpayee’s attitude to the communal question in India too has unmistakably hardened. Speaking at a function organized by the leaders of the arch Hindu rashtra parties — Rashtriyaswayam Sewak Sangh (RSS) and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) — and other like-minded Hindu leaders in New York on September 9,2000, Mr Vajpayee, when asked how soon a Ram Temple would be built in Ayodhya, categorically said: “If the electorate gives us a clear two-thirds majority, we will build the India of our dreams; there is no doubt about that.”

Unless sanity prevails among the devotees of Hindutva in India, a major crisis over the building of the Ram Temple at the site of the demolished Babri Masjid in Ayodhya would come to a head within the next few days. After the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December 1992, when zealots of the Hindu fundamentalist parties seemed bent upon building a temple at its site, the Indian Supreme Court passed an interim stay order calling upon all parties in the case not to alter the site in any manner until the formal plea asking for permission to build a temple on the site had been disposed of. However, the RSS and other Sangh parivar groups appear adamant in their resolve to start building a temple on Feb 25, regardless of what the court says. If they go ahead with their plan, it could mean a fresh round of Hindu-Muslim rioting in India.

After its victory in the Gujarat state elections late last year, the Hindu zealots appear to believe that they could make electoral gains in some nine states where elections are due to be held later this year by following a similar strategy of militant assertion of Hindu religious and political philosophy.

However, Mr Vajpayee does not seem to have reckoned with the saner elements within his own coalition NDA. According to a report in Dubai-based Khaleej Times earlier this week, the BJP could be on a “collision course” with its allied parties on the question of the Hindutva agenda. The report says that the non- Hindutva parties in Vajpayee’s coalition have begun to be impatient with the BJP’s “dual approach” — one with the (non- Hindutva) allies to remain in the seat of power and another to appease the fascistic Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP).

Overall, Mr Vajpayee’s multi-party coalition appears to be in a state of flux. Last Sunday the BJP held a meeting with all its allies to work out a strategy to counter opposition in the parliament session. However, the leading members of the coalition parties who met Vajpayee earlier maintained that the BJP had “to come clear” on the various issues pertaining to the Hindutva agenda. A seasoned politician and intellectual, Mr Vajpayee does not need to be reminded that one cannot fool all the people all of the time.

I NEVER realized that duct tape would play such an important role in my life. I was in Weaver’s Hardware Store in Georgetown, and apparently Mr. Weaver knew why I was there. Without saying a word, he pointed to a shelf that said, “DUCT TAPE.”

There was only one roll left, and just as I grabbed for it a lady tried to wrestle it out of my hands.

“It’s mine,” she said. “I need it for homeland security.”

“So do I. I need four gallons of water, a flashlight and duct tape. There is only so much duct tape to go around, and it is allotted by your value to the country, in case we are attacked.”

I then asked, “What does your husband do?”

“He’s a lawyer,” she said.

“He’s way down on the food chain. In time of war, lawyers don’t count for much.”

This got her angry and she continued to fight for the tape.

Finally Mr. Weaver came over and said, “What’s going on?”

I said, “I saw the duct tape first and she’s trying to grab it from me. Besides, her husband is a lawyer and I’m a newspaperman. Who gets the duct tape first?”

Weaver said, “I prefer not to get into that. I expect to get more tape in on Thursday. Can’t one of you wait until then?”

“Suppose there’s an attack tomorrow?” I said. “I won’t have anything to cover the cracks in the doors and the windows.”

A customer watching all this said, “You shouldn’t panic. I remember during the Cuban Missile Crisis we were all told to build bomb shelters in our back yards. I put $50,000 into mine. We had Persian carpets, leather chairs, running water, a radio scanner and the complete recordings of Frank Sinatra.

“The real problem was that my wife and kids started to brag about it and pretty soon everyone in the neighborhood knew about our shelter. The people around us decided as long as we had such a nice bunker there was no reason for them to build theirs.

“During one scare, a dozen people showed up. When I wouldn’t let them, in they started banging pots and pans. I brought out my shotgun and said I was going to shoot them. Fortunately the crisis was called off.

“I tell you this story because Americans act differently when the heat is on. This time it’s a duct tape shortage. The next time it could be Aunt Jemima’s pancake flour.”

After hearing this story, I was ashamed of myself. I said to the lady, “Do you want the tape? We’re going to need lawyers after the fighting stops.”

“No,” she said. “We are going to need newspapermen more than lawyers to tell us what mistakes we made. Here, take the tape.”

The man who told us about his bomb shelter said, “If either of you don’t want the duct tape, I’ll take it.”

I said, “I thought you didn’t believe in civil defense anymore.”

He replied, “Better safe than sorry.”

Mr. Weaver said, “You have to pay cash for the tape. I am not accepting any charges in case the balloon goes up.”—Dawn/Tribune Media Services

THE chiefs of the UN arms inspection team and the International Atomic Energy Agency have stated in their second report that they have found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq but have asked for more time for further investigation.

Eleven of the fifteen members of the Security Council, including three permanent members — France, China and Russia — are willing to let the arms inspectors complete their job while Britain, US, Spain and Bulgaria are opposed to any further extension of the deadline because they are convinced that Iraq is in material breach of the UN Security Council resolution 1141. The four, therefore, demand armed action against Iraq to be authorized by the Security Council.

On scrutiny, the case for military action seems to be weak. For the UN inspectors are of the view that Iraq has been fully complying with their demands. It has allowed interrogation of its scientists even outside the country, unimpeded access to suspected sites and surprise visits to sensitive installations. So far the arms inspectors could recover only twelve empty shells of chemical weapons and have obtained about two hundred chemical and more than a hundred germ samples while the Iraqi authorities have admitted to illegal acquisition of 380 missiles called Al-Masud II. Only three Iraqi scientists have refused to depose in the absence of Iraqi officials while all others have been interrogated by the monitors with no local officials being present.

It may be recalled that until 1998, the UN team had inspected 400 sites, including several harmless ones such as water and milk plants, pharmaceutical factories and furniture shops. During the current phase of inspection, about 200 sites were strip-searched. But still George Bush is not satisfied with the progress in the disarming of Iraq and keeps making disparaging remarks against the inspectors. In fact, the American president is not interested in the disarmament of Iraq; instead, he wants to overthrow the Baathist government by the US-backed subversion or invasion and replace it with some puppet regime that would lease out most of 112 billion-barrel oilfields to Chevron-Texas and other US oil companies in the same manner as Gen. Fazalollah Zahedi had done after the overthrow of the Iranian prime minister, Dr. Muhammad Musaddeq by the CIA-backed coup in Iran.

Then followed a 25-year period of absolute monarchy under the Shahenshah Aryameher Muhammad Reza Shah, popularly known in the US media as the hired gun of Pentagon.

The mighty Soviet Union did not move even its little finger in support of the nationalist — democrat leader, Dr. Mosaddeq, and let him be toppled by the Americans. If Russia remains a passive spectator of George Bush’s aggression on Iraq, apart from the fact that it will upset the balance of power in the region to the detriment of Moscow, it will also set a dangerous precedent in world politics, whereby a strong nation would impose its will on the weak by force of arms. If the international community acquiesces in the US invasion of Iraq, it will have to rewrite the UN Charter, permitting the strong to conquer the weaker members of its own fraternity. It will mean a return to the law of jungle.

In his report on February 15, Hans Blix rejected Colin Powell’s dossier on Iraq as false and unconvincing, especially the photographs of the site at Al-Musayyib taken in May and July last year. The allegation is that the plant used to transship chemical weapons from production facilities to the field. The inspectors also rejected his allegation that an engine testing stand found in Iraq was intended for long-range missile that can hit a target 1,200 kilometers away. The experts found no evidence that the test stand was used for any prohibited activity. Further, the chief IAEA inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei, also did not find anything new in Colin Powell’s documents about Iraq’s laser enrichment plan.

That the Anglo-US axis would go to the extent of forging the evidence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programme can be seen in the British dossier that is a plagiarized version of old academic papers presented as “intelligence report”. The forgerers must have been in a hurry to present their so-called evidence to the Security Council members since they did not even edit it properly. Does it lie in the mouths of George Bush and Tony Blair to accuse Saddam Hussein of deceit when they themselves are guilty of it?

From the findings of the weapons inspectors so far no case can be made out against Iraq, warranting enforcement action by the UN Security Council. If anything, there is irrefutable evidence on record that the US and Britain have committed something close to aggression against Iraq by sending 100,000 troops and warships, warplanes and aircraft carriers in the Gulf. During the eighties the International Court of Justice ruled that the deployment of the US naval force in the Nicaraguan waters and the violation of the Nicaraguan air space by the US planes were acts of aggression against that country. The US has been doing the same against Iraq as manifested in the routine bombardment of northern and southern Iraq by the British and American warplanes on the pretext of enforcement of no-fly zone prohibitions. This is blatant aggression because there is no mention of no-fly zone in the Security Council resolution but the world body has not condemned this continuing piracy.

On the other hand, George Bush and Tony Blair have been threatening the Security Council that if it did not authorize armed action against Iraq, it would become irrelevant. To many Third World countries, the council has long become irrelevant since it could not resolve the Palestine and Kashmir disputes for the last 55 years. The world body could not implement its own resolutions in the above-mentioned cases.

As for Iraq, it has offered maximum cooperation in the process of its disarmament not only to the UN arms inspectors but also to the Bush administration. For example, the Iraqi leader finally agreed to allow the search of presidential palaces; he invited the American CIA to search for hidden arms as alleged by George Bush; he agreed to allow the US spy planes U-2 to locate suspected sites in Iraq; and he allowed the weapons inspectors to interrogate the Iraqi scientists even outside the country. If this is not cooperation, what is?

Now that the total disarmament of Iraq is in sight and the world body will have to lift the crippling sanctions that have already cost the lives of half a million Iraqi children, the US has put forward a new demand, namely, the removal of Iraqi president from his office and his replacement with its own puppet. But this is not envisaged by the Security Council resolution 1441. Therefore, George Bush wants his war, using Iraq’s alleged non-compliance as a pretext.

Here is where the US finds itself in a tight corner in the council whose eleven — including three permanent — members being opposed to war. The matter is no longer confined to the precincts of the Security Council. It has spilled over into the streets where the common man has risen to the occasion to stop the relentless drift toward war. There have been sporadic demonstrations, especially in the western democracies, against the war but they received added impetus as George Bush threatened the use of nuclear weapons in the war against Iraq.

On February 15, two million people in London, three million in Rome, half a million in Paris and two hundred thousand in New York went to the streets, shouting slogans against war which was for oil, and pillorying Bush as new Hitler. The anti-war demonstrations have erupted in 600 cities in five continents, cutting across religious, cultural, racial, linguistic and geographic barriers and diversities. Interestingly, the two civilizations, Islam and the West, seem to have joined forces in combating war and aggression. The Muslims in this part of the world must distinguish between the rulers and the people and affirm solidarity with the latter in the cause of peace rather than branding all non-Muslims as their enemies.