| |
Tuesday, July 6, 1999
Periscope on Pakistan
Sending reluctant heroes to their death DAWN: One thing is certain: those whipping up war hysteria will not be donning uniforms and moving to the battle-front. They will remain ensconced in their safe havens and send reluctant heroes to their death. Wars may be hell, but it is other people's hell. NATO has won a famous victory in Yugoslavia but neither Clinton nor Tony Blair nor indeed Milosevic will be changing their residence and moving into a refugee camp, there to live with thousands of displaced persons as terrified strangers, moving on in convoys that lead to other refugee camps, journeys to nowhere. The prospect of a war between Pakistan and India unlikely though it may be it can never be ruled out because events can spiral out of control is one that will fill people on both sides with horror. It would be madness of the first magnitude, not merely in terms of costly human lives and the destruction but it would de-stabilise the entire region and no one can foresee what forces would beunleashed.No war hysteria, no hate campaigns NEWS (From a journalist visiting Delhi with Pak foreign minister Sartaj Aziz): India and Indians generally behave in a superior even supercilious manner with Pakistanis, bragging about the size of their country, the longevity of their democracy, the independence of their Press, the strength of their state and public institutions, the secular character of their polity, the scale and preparedness their armed forces, the innate right if not destiny of their country to take its place among the great powers of the world etc, etc. They scoff at Pakistan, its size, its many abortive experiments with democracy, its primitivism, its religious zealots, its lack of an entirely free press, its constant `conspiracies' against India, its support of the militancy in Kashmir and so on and so forth. And yet when we told them in Delhi that there was no war hysteria in Pakistan, no hate campaigns against India... the reaction was one of disbelief. Such chauvinism aswe witnessed in Delhi, we had not quite experienced before...Such intolerance if practised by a human being would be intolerable.US trying to salvage ties with Pakistan FRONTIER POST: The Indians, on the other hand, have smelled blood for the first time. They are capitalising on the negative response that the world has shown towards Pakistan's position on Kashmir. American officials are now trying to salvage the damage to the Pak-US ties in the wake of the recent tilt towards India. The US ambassador is aware of popular sentiments about Kashmir. That is why he is trying to give the message that Washington is equally pressuring India and Pakistan to de-escalate. In all these developments, Pakistani diplomacy is distinctly absent. India has wrested the initiative from Pakistan for the first time in the realm of diplomacy.From long-lost cousins to warring bulls DAWN: Only in February this year, Indians and Pakistanis were seen sobbing on each other's shoulders like long-lostcousins. In that fitful fever of friendship they signed as many as three documents, and found no less than twenty points of agreement. But good things are not meant to last for long in the Continent of Circe. Now, only four months later, they are foaming at the mouth and scraping the ground under their feet like two ill-tempered bulls.Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
Top
|
|
|
Printer-friendly page |
