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| India-Pakistan |
| Colin sez Perv's a liar... diplomatically, anyway. |
| 2002-07-29 |
| Secretary of State Colin L. Powell refused yesterday to back the claim by Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, that his government had stopped militant Muslims from crossing the disputed Kashmiri border into India, but he said tensions between the rivals have eased. ''Everybody agrees that it has gone down,'' Powell said of infiltrations at a news conference in the Pakistani capital at the end of a two-day visit to the Asian subcontinent. ''Some say significantly, some say it's only temporary and not yet significant. With respect to the US position, we are monitoring this carefully. We still are not able to say that they have been stopped, though they have gone down.'' That about agrees with my assessment yestereday... General Musharraf, however, said yesterday that he had done all there was to do to stop Islamic militants from crossing the disputed border. ''It is not taking place now. Whatever the Indian side is saying is absolutely baseless,'' said Musharraf, who was not at the news conference. ''I don't have to do anything because we've already done it.'' The Indos can document that it hasn't, quite, stopped. I suspect that every time or almost every time there's cross-border firing it's cover for jihadis infiltrating. But I think Perv's throttled it back as far as he feels he safely can. He won't do more, possibly because, as he says regularly, he "won't compromise on Kashmir," more likely because he's afraid of civil war or a new coup by True Believers in the army. It's a pretty narrow tightrope for him, and Qazi and Company will be trying their best to build up a support base for the fundos in the military... |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |