US says Pak yet to meet benchmarks

US says Pak yet to meet benchmarks
CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA

WASHINGTON, FEBRUARY 10: Pakistan is doing its utmost to draw President Bill Clinton to visit the country by undertaking a series of moves aimed at mollifying US concerns on terrorism.

But it is still no go. Indications here are that Pakistan is yet to meet US benchmarks to make the visit possible. Washington is urging Islamabad to go a little further, to do more. The message from the military junta: can't do more without undermining domestic position.

In recent days, Islamabad has prevailed upon its now-famous hardline cleric Maulana Masood Azhar to stop his anti-West rhetoric. Azhar has been taken into ``protective custody'' by Pakistani intelligence agencies to soften him up.

The US has privately welcomed the detention, although the rationale provided by the military government to Washington is that Azhar was stirring up ``doctrinal disputes'' between the Harkat ul-Mujaheddin and Lashkar-e-Taiba, and also provoking Sunnis against Shias.

Musharraf has also initiated high-level contacts with theTaliban regime in Afghanistan to discuss ways to resolve Washington's orders that it expel the Saudi extremist Osama bin-Laden. But this perforce has to be a long drawn process that will take time, less any hasty move roil the jehadi forces.

More recently, the Musharraf regime is reported to have hurriedly hustled out the Chechen leader Zelimkhan Yanderbayev, who had come to rally support from the jehadi forces. Reports from Islamabad spoke of a hush-hush meeting between the General and the rebel commander amid angry protests from Russia about Islamabad's role in the region.

While all these moves are still cosmetic, they represent the first vindication of a US judgment arrived very early on after the coup in Pakistan: that General Musharraf is essentially a ``secular'' leader who might just be the bulwark against the Islamic forces that the US is seeking to contain.

Thanks to all these deft steps combined with more accommodating noises on the proliferation front, toned down nuclear rhetoric, and a moretransparent trial against deposed prime minister Sharif, Washington is inclined to schedule a brief Presidential touchdown in Pakistan, may be for a couple of hours.

But Islamabad wants a longer visit. As it is, officials there are chafing at the President's five-day visit to India and a day-long visit to Bangladesh, not to speak of the wider and more positive agenda Washington has with both countries.

According to one report, Washington is considering a Presidential stopover in Lahore for a Clinton meeting with Pakistan's elected President Rafiq Tarar. But this is unacceptable to the military junta since it would severely undermine Musharraf.

Washington appears to recognise this and efforts are now underway on how to package a dialogue with a military dictator to the domestic US constituency and Congressional forces ranged against the visit, mostly members from the House of Representatives.

One tack: To suggest the situation in the region is so dangerous that it requires US interlocution with justabout anyone who holds the reigns. President Clinton already began to make the case in remarks yesterday in which he said developments in the region ``has enormous implications for people in the US and throughout the world, more, I suspect, than most people know.''

But administration officials told The Indian Express that a Pakistan stopover was still too close to call. ``The President is keen to go, if only to get a handle on Pakistan. But the sense right now is Pakistan is not doing enough, not giving us enough of a fig leaf, to schedule the stopover,'' one official said

Clinton, however, laid the ground for a longer, possibly post-Presidential, involvement in the region saying, ``I hope in the time that I am there that we can make some progress, because it is something that I remain profoundly concerned about for years and years into the future.''

But as the administration has made it abundantly clear, its primary concern centers more about Pakistan's inherent instability and its consequentadventurism more than India's obdurate stance, though Washington would like New Delhi to take some initiatives to defuse the situation in Kashmir.

Pakistan has not make it any easier for India or the US following Musharraf's aggravating trip to `Azad Kashmir' in which he tried to differentiate between jehad and the terrorist activities in Kashmir. Dropping all pretense of waging a proxy war as New Delhi has described it, he also openly urged militant groups to bury their differences and rally for the struggle in Kashmir, a transparent and open stimulus to further attacks in Kashmir.

The remarks did not unnoticed in Washington. ``Strong rhetoric is not helpful in this situation,'' a State Department official said. The utterances, combined with the inopportunely timed test of the Hatf-1 missile, has further queered the pitch for a Presidential stopover just when the administration was finding rationale for it.

Some of these developments came up for discussions on Wednesday when the Indian ForeignSecretary Lalit Mansingh met a range of senior US interlocutors. But Indian officials made it clear that Pakistan was marginal to the dialogue that had a broader, wider agenda including arrangements for President Clinton's trip.

Mansingh met US Under Secretary of State Thomas Pickering, who is handling the nuts and bolts of the agenda from the US side. He then had a luncheon meeting with Deputy Secretary Strobe Talbott. Earlier, he had a 45-minute meeting with National Security Advisor Sandy Berger. Underlining the broad scope of the visit, the foreign secretary also had talks with US Under Secretary for Economic Affairs Alan Larson.