US Ready to Ditch Musharraf? Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Consider the source of this report and take it with a grain of salt. In truth, the US seems very ready to play Let's You and Him Fight, just to keep the pot boiling, even if it's a nuclear soup that's being cooked up. Unless they have a new patsy on tap.-- NY Transfer] The Times of India - May 31, 2002 http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_ID=11583302 Seeing war, US ready to ditch Mush, region by CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA TIMES NEWS NETWORK WASHINGTON: The US has begun distancing itself from Pakistan's military dictator Pervez Musharraf and reconciling to the possibility of an all-out war in the region. Having clearly laid the onus of de-escalation on Musharraf, to the extent of repeatedly asking him to stop cross-border terrorism, the Bush administration issued a dramatic travel warning with respect to India, authorising all its non-essential diplomatic staff to leave the country and advising its nationals to return home by any means available. Washington is now convinced that India is serious about prosecuting a war against Musharraf and his hardline militarists - and not the Pakistani people - because of his unremitting support to terrorism. US moves to pack up from the region came even as it began preparations for some hardball diplomacy aimed mostly at the military regime in Islamabad, which defying American expectations that it would be a moderate, liberal dispensation, is turning out to be extreme. Ahead of the visits to the region of Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage on June 6 and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in June 9, the administration on Thursday rushed out state department mandarin Nancy Powell to Islamabad as a special envoy. Powell, no relative of the Secretary of State, is being designated to succeed Wendy Chamberlain as the Ambassador in Islamabad. But because the post requires senate confirmation, she has been sent as the charge d'affairs given the urgency of the situation. Musharraf's hair-trigger nuclear posture and his allusions to waging a holy war against India have unnerved his patrons in Washington. Even Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was unshakable in his confidence in Musharraf, has begun wincing at Islamabad's on-the-edge strategy, especially after Pakistani diplomat Munir Akram broadcast before the world on Thursday his country's low threshold for throwing in nuclear weapons. Asked on a television news show on Thursday if nuclear weapons would be used by India or Pakistan if conflict came, Powell indicated that he had told the Pakistanis how foolish such an option would be, given India's no first use policy. Senior Indian diplomats have told US officials again that India is still committed to a no first use of nuclear weapons. "For that matter, India does not take a decision to wage war easily or lightly. It is a deliberative, consensual decision involving the Parliament and the people of India, not based on the whim and fancy of one man," Indian diplomats said, adding they had conveyed this message to the State Department. New Delhi has also conveyed that Musharraf, who it accuses of having continually waged war for the last two-and-a-half years despite his protestations of peace, can still avert the crisis by addressing international concerns on terrorism. The cooling of American ardour towards Musharraf comes amid murmurs in South Asian circles of a need for a regime change in Pakistan if there is to be some long-term stability in the region beyond the present crisis. The first ball has been thrown up in the air by former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who in comments in the Los Angeles Times and the UK's Guardian said that it was unlikely that dialogue proposals could halt the inexorable march to war now taking place, and "there is one way that war can be prevented, and that is a change of regime." Bhutto obviously has her own agenda, but she pointed out that Musharraf carried the baggage of being the man who planned the Kargil invasion in 1999. Such thinking is slowly beginning to dawn in the administration circles also, though the immediate US aim is to prevent conflict. In deference to New Delhi's anger, Bush administration officials have suddenly stopped issuing the daily certificates and endorsements about Musharraf's cooperation in the war on terrorism. Uniformly, officials, from President Bush down, are saying the Pakistani general has to make good on his pledges to stop infiltration and terrorism, and implying clearly that he is not doing so. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytmid-06.01.02-07:03:35-16760