*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*
{ Sila lawat Laman Hizbi-Net - http://www.hizbi.net }
{ Hantarkan mesej anda ke: [EMAIL PROTECTED] }
{ Iklan barangan? Hantarkan ke [EMAIL PROTECTED] }
*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*
PAS : KE ARAH PEMERINTAHAN ISLAM YANG ADIL
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Afghanistan shadow over Indo-US ties
By Sultan Shahin
NEW DELHI - Indian-Pakistan rivalry in Afghanistan is
beginning to cast a shadow over newly revitalized
Indo-US relations. Diplomatic observers in New Delhi,
like senior US administration officials in Washington,
are concerned.
Influential voices within the ruling establishment are
asking if it is wise for India, with its 200-million
strong Muslim population and important ties with the
Muslim world, to join hands with the US in what is
clearly emerging, in view of its blind support for
Israel, as its continuing war against Islam.
Doubts also persist, despite US rhetoric, about its
sincerity in the war against terror. Unfortunately,
for India, all this is happening at a time when
several meetings between top leaders of the two
countries have infused a new life in their relations
and India seems to need the US more than the other way
round.
An Indo-Pak sideshow has been clearly going on in
Afghanistan and it is making the US worried. "As
version two of the Great Game is being played out in
the killing fields of Afghanistan, Western analysts
are watching with great interest the India-Pakistan
sideshow that has all the trappings of a regional
rivalry," reports The Times of India from Washington.
India is making rapid diplomatic inroads into Kabul
through the Northern Alliance leadership.
Ministers-designate of both interior and foreign
affairs in the transitional government have already
visited India and been assured of a burgeoning
relationship between the two countries in the days
ahead. The defense minister-designate is scheduled to
visit next week.
Pakistan, meanwhile, is making a beeline for the
Pashtun command of Hamid Karzai, the leader-designate
of Afghanistan's provisional council, in Kandahar.
Incidentally, Karzai, too, has an India connection. He
acquired his education in India and has close
relatives that live in the country.
"India, by virtue of its secular ideology,
consistency, and size is finally walking tall," writes
the Times of India correspondent in Washington
Chidanand Rajghatta. "Pakistan, unsure and adrift, is
trying hard to play catch-up. Nowhere is this more
apparent than in Afghanistan itself, where for years
the two countries backed rival factions. Now, with the
fall of the Taliban, it is New Delhi's day as its
Northern Alliance proteges are swept into power. But
Islamabad is not giving up without a fight. As deftly
as it ditched the Taliban, Pakistan is now cottoned on
to the newly-chosen Pashtun leader Hamid Karzai,
hoping to arrest Kabul's tilt towards India. Attempts
are also afoot to drive a wedge between Karzai and the
alliance leaders by suggesting that the former is
unhappy with the visits and the utterances of the
designated ministers. Karzai has himself not said a
word."
In an apparent reversal of fortune, while Pakistan is
still trying to get a diplomatic toehold in Kandahar,
India has already established a foothold in Kabul,
where it is poised to be among the first countries to
re-open its diplomatic mission. Not to be outdone,
Pakistan has said that it will re-open its embassy in
Kabul, although given the public hostility against the
supporters of the Taliban it will not be an easy task.
An Indo-Pak rivalry in Afghanistan is the last thing
that the US wants while the war against terrorism is
still incomplete and the world is faced with the
enormous task of the Central Asian country's
reconstruction, say senior US administration
officials. But they are also deeply appreciative,
according to The Times of India, of New Delhi's
humanitarian aid to Kabul, including the dispatch of
medical personnel and supplies.
Rajghatta comments, "Pakistani mandarins, instructed
in the same diplomatic school as their Indian
counterparts, have long won praise for their
quicksilver thinking and deft responses. But they are
now fighting an uphill battle. Not only has Islamabad
had to reverse course over the Taliban, whom President
[General Pervez] Musharraf continued to praise and
defend even after September 11, but it has also has
had to reach out to Iran and Russia, among the
countries it antagonized with its backing of the
fundamentalist regime. But the biggest blow to
Pakistan has come from the country expected to be its
chief patron - the United States.
"Almost every assumption that Pakistan's military
regime made while reversing its diplomatic course -
protecting its nuclear assets, its position on
Kashmir, and reviving its economy among others - is
coming unstuck. Relentless exposure in the Western
media about the links of Pakistani nuclear scientists
with terrorists has now brought its nuclear program
under the inevitable scrutiny of the Americans.
Washington has also shown no inclination of backing
Islamabad's position on Kashmir and has instead
pointedly refused to endorse the 'they are freedom
fighters not terrorists' line."
All this is good news for Indo-US bilateral relations.
The world has changed, says veteran defense analyst
Air Commodore Jasjit Singh, "and we need to recognize
that US is increasingly important for our defense
capability. The recently concluded bilateral meetings
promise to infuse new life into Indo-US defense
cooperation. Barring the short-lived honeymoon after
the 1962 Sino-Indian war, defense cooperation between
the two countries had been virtually absent till the
mid-1980s."
It may sound curious, but at the height of the second
Cold War and with the Soviets in Afghanistan, the two
countries signed an MoU in 1984 for the transfer of
sensitive military technology to India, recalls Singh,
who headed until recently the semi-governmental think
tank Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses. "The
later agreement for the supply of the GE 404 engine
for the LCA [Light Combat Aircraft] was one of the
effects. The United States no doubt saw an opportunity
to reduce Soviet influence in India; and India, having
only recently purchased a large range of arms from the
Soviet Union, sought to pursue its traditional policy
of self-reliance in defense. However, US commitment to
the MoU appeared to fade away with the decline and
collapse of the Soviet Union.
"The US pressed for military-to-military contacts
[first proposed in 1984], now in the shape of
Kicklighter proposals. While India agreed to this, the
asymmetry and limitations of such a process were
obvious. It is to overcome these that the 'Agreed
Minutes' of January 1995 set up the Defense Policy
Group [DPG] as an intergovernmental body between the
two ministries of defense with a Joint Technical Group
to coordinate technology issues. Unfortunately the DPG
had just started to find its feet with discussions on
peacekeeping, etc, when the process was stalled by New
Delhi, possibly since little of value was seen to
emerge. The service-to-service contacts and limited
technical cooperation continued till the nuclear tests
in May 1998 and the consequent sanctions put a stop to
even that and put a question mark on programs like the
LCA.
"The basic paradigm of Indo-US relations, on the other
hand, has been changing since then. In some ways the
non-proliferation issue was laid to rest and greater
pragmatism emerged to the extent that both countries
have now declared that 'joint counter-proliferation
efforts' would be important elements of defense
cooperation. The roots of the change go back to the
Jaswant Singh-Strobe Talbot talks of 1998-1999 and
their importance in that the US for the first time was
discussing strategic-security issues with a country
which was neither an ally nor an enemy; and it was
also the first time India was sharing in some detail
its strategic and security perspectives with a
superpower," says Singh.
He continues: "Increasing cooperation, especially on
counterterrorism, helped move the relationship forward
of the trade and economic dimensions, although they
must remain central. At the fundamental level, we need
to recognize that the United States is becoming
increasingly important for our defense capability. The
defense industry is shrinking worldwide, while weapon
systems of ever-higher technology are crucial to war
fighting. This also means higher costs of armament and
military equipment, made more expensive by the
devaluation of the rupee against the US dollar during
the last decade. The Soviet Union was our major
supplier of weapon systems for nearly three decades
while Western Europe provided the remaining 15-20
percent of weapons systems. Most of the Soviet systems
were manufactured under license in India, providing
for greater self-reliance.
"But the logical goal of defense cooperation must be
centered on the defense industry, especially
collaboration in design, development and production of
systems and sub-systems," advises Singh. "We need not
be over-ambitious and seek only frontier technology,
for which natural hesitations will remain. But there
is a vast area in low-end and middle-level military
technology where Indian defense industry
infrastructure and capabilities could be used [and
further built] to mutual advantage by both sides.
India's expanding private sector now has the ability
to play a vital role in this process. Our strength in
information technology also has tremendous potential
to deepen cooperation."
It would be a pity, however, if the burgeoning Indo-US
relations were to be scuppered by India-Pakistan
one-upmanship in Afghanistan. Talking about Indo-US
relations, US Ambassador in India Robert D Blackwill
recently said, "Washington has also decided to remove
the hyphen in its South Asia policy. The US is
determined to treat South Asia in a non-hyphenated
way. We are treating US-India relations separate from
any other relations. What we are seeing in US-India
relations is not connected to events occurring in
Pakistan."
Singh adds, "It would be wise for the mandarins
running India's foreign policy not to force the US to
hyphenate Indo-US relations again as Indo-Pakistan-US
relations. Afghanistan is important. So is our need to
reduce Pakistani influence in Kabul, so that it is not
used again to motivate and train terrorists. But we
should not jeopardize our growing relations with the
US in the process of securing our legitimate interests
in Afghanistan."
Some analysts decry India seeking entry into the new
Great Game on moral grounds. They also think that it
is against India's long-term interests. Achin Vanayak,
for instance, writes in the influential Hindu
newspaper, "India is seeking entry into a game where
it is at best a very minor player, where its role,
whatever else it does, will certainly exacerbate its
relations with Pakistan. That Pakistan, ruled by the
same kind of realpolitik thinking about 'outflanking'
or 'undermining' its rival, is also acting in ways
detrimental to its longer-term security considerations
can hardly be much of a consolation.
"The truth of the matter is that in South Asia, as in
West Asia, there is only one way to try and establish
an enduring stability and security. In West Asia it
can only come about through a just settlement of the
Palestine issue, ie, one which is ultimately
acceptable to the people of Palestine and therefore
not acceptable to today's Israel. In South Asia, there
will have to be a just settlement of the Kashmir
issue, that is, one that is acceptable to Kashmiris on
both sides of the border and therefore one that will
not be acceptable to the Indian and Pakistani
governments of today. But there will also be no
stability if priority is not given to the interests of
the Afghan people themselves rather than to
surrounding national interests," the newspaper said.
Part 2: Doubts over US sincerity
By Sultan Shahin
NEW DELHI - Indian-Pakistan rivalry in Afghanistan is
beginning to cast a shadow over newly revitalized
Indo-US relations. Diplomatic observers in New Delhi,
like senior US administration officials in Washington,
are concerned.
Influential voices within the ruling establishment are
asking if it is wise for India, with its 200-million
strong Muslim population and important ties with the
Muslim world, to join hands with the US in what is
clearly emerging, in view of its blind support for
Israel, as its continuing war against Islam.
Doubts also persist, despite US rhetoric, about its
sincerity in the war against terror. Unfortunately,
for India, all this is happening at a time when
several meetings between top leaders of the two
countries have infused a new life in their relations
and India seems to need the US more than the other way
round.
An Indo-Pak sideshow has been clearly going on in
Afghanistan and it is making the US worried. "As
version two of the Great Game is being played out in
the killing fields of Afghanistan, Western analysts
are watching with great interest the India-Pakistan
sideshow that has all the trappings of a regional
rivalry," reports The Times of India from Washington.
India is making rapid diplomatic inroads into Kabul
through the Northern Alliance leadership.
Ministers-designate of both interior and foreign
affairs in the transitional government have already
visited India and been assured of a burgeoning
relationship between the two countries in the days
ahead. The defense minister-designate is scheduled to
visit next week.
Pakistan, meanwhile, is making a beeline for the
Pashtun command of Hamid Karzai, the leader-designate
of Afghanistan's provisional council, in Kandahar.
Incidentally, Karzai, too, has an India connection. He
acquired his education in India and has close
relatives that live in the country.
"India, by virtue of its secular ideology,
consistency, and size is finally walking tall," writes
the Times of India correspondent in Washington
Chidanand Rajghatta. "Pakistan, unsure and adrift, is
trying hard to play catch-up. Nowhere is this more
apparent than in Afghanistan itself, where for years
the two countries backed rival factions. Now, with the
fall of the Taliban, it is New Delhi's day as its
Northern Alliance proteges are swept into power. But
Islamabad is not giving up without a fight. As deftly
as it ditched the Taliban, Pakistan is now cottoned on
to the newly-chosen Pashtun leader Hamid Karzai,
hoping to arrest Kabul's tilt towards India. Attempts
are also afoot to drive a wedge between Karzai and the
alliance leaders by suggesting that the former is
unhappy with the visits and the utterances of the
designated ministers. Karzai has himself not said a
word."
In an apparent reversal of fortune, while Pakistan is
still trying to get a diplomatic toehold in Kandahar,
India has already established a foothold in Kabul,
where it is poised to be among the first countries to
re-open its diplomatic mission. Not to be outdone,
Pakistan has said that it will re-open its embassy in
Kabul, although given the public hostility against the
supporters of the Taliban it will not be an easy task.
An Indo-Pak rivalry in Afghanistan is the last thing
that the US wants while the war against terrorism is
still incomplete and the world is faced with the
enormous task of the Central Asian country's
reconstruction, say senior US administration
officials. But they are also deeply appreciative,
according to The Times of India, of New Delhi's
humanitarian aid to Kabul, including the dispatch of
medical personnel and supplies.
Rajghatta comments, "Pakistani mandarins, instructed
in the same diplomatic school as their Indian
counterparts, have long won praise for their
quicksilver thinking and deft responses. But they are
now fighting an uphill battle. Not only has Islamabad
had to reverse course over the Taliban, whom President
[General Pervez] Musharraf continued to praise and
defend even after September 11, but it has also has
had to reach out to Iran and Russia, among the
countries it antagonized with its backing of the
fundamentalist regime. But the biggest blow to
Pakistan has come from the country expected to be its
chief patron - the United States.
"Almost every assumption that Pakistan's military
regime made while reversing its diplomatic course -
protecting its nuclear assets, its position on
Kashmir, and reviving its economy among others - is
coming unstuck. Relentless exposure in the Western
media about the links of Pakistani nuclear scientists
with terrorists has now brought its nuclear program
under the inevitable scrutiny of the Americans.
Washington has also shown no inclination of backing
Islamabad's position on Kashmir and has instead
pointedly refused to endorse the 'they are freedom
fighters not terrorists' line."
All this is good news for Indo-US bilateral relations.
The world has changed, says veteran defense analyst
Air Commodore Jasjit Singh, "and we need to recognize
that US is increasingly important for our defense
capability. The recently concluded bilateral meetings
promise to infuse new life into Indo-US defense
cooperation. Barring the short-lived honeymoon after
the 1962 Sino-Indian war, defense cooperation between
the two countries had been virtually absent till the
mid-1980s."
It may sound curious, but at the height of the second
Cold War and with the Soviets in Afghanistan, the two
countries signed an MoU in 1984 for the transfer of
sensitive military technology to India, recalls Singh,
who headed until recently the semi-governmental think
tank Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses. "The
later agreement for the supply of the GE 404 engine
for the LCA [Light Combat Aircraft] was one of the
effects. The United States no doubt saw an opportunity
to reduce Soviet influence in India; and India, having
only recently purchased a large range of arms from the
Soviet Union, sought to pursue its traditional policy
of self-reliance in defense. However, US commitment to
the MoU appeared to fade away with the decline and
collapse of the Soviet Union.
"The US pressed for military-to-military contacts
[first proposed in 1984], now in the shape of
Kicklighter proposals. While India agreed to this, the
asymmetry and limitations of such a process were
obvious. It is to overcome these that the 'Agreed
Minutes' of January 1995 set up the Defense Policy
Group [DPG] as an intergovernmental body between the
two ministries of defense with a Joint Technical Group
to coordinate technology issues. Unfortunately the DPG
had just started to find its feet with discussions on
peacekeeping, etc, when the process was stalled by New
Delhi, possibly since little of value was seen to
emerge. The service-to-service contacts and limited
technical cooperation continued till the nuclear tests
in May 1998 and the consequent sanctions put a stop to
even that and put a question mark on programs like the
LCA.
"The basic paradigm of Indo-US relations, on the other
hand, has been changing since then. In some ways the
non-proliferation issue was laid to rest and greater
pragmatism emerged to the extent that both countries
have now declared that 'joint counter-proliferation
efforts' would be important elements of defense
cooperation. The roots of the change go back to the
Jaswant Singh-Strobe Talbot talks of 1998-1999 and
their importance in that the US for the first time was
discussing strategic-security issues with a country
which was neither an ally nor an enemy; and it was
also the first time India was sharing in some detail
its strategic and security perspectives with a
superpower," says Singh.
He continues: "Increasing cooperation, especially on
counterterrorism, helped move the relationship forward
of the trade and economic dimensions, although they
must remain central. At the fundamental level, we need
to recognize that the United States is becoming
increasingly important for our defense capability. The
defense industry is shrinking worldwide, while weapon
systems of ever-higher technology are crucial to war
fighting. This also means higher costs of armament and
military equipment, made more expensive by the
devaluation of the rupee against the US dollar during
the last decade. The Soviet Union was our major
supplier of weapon systems for nearly three decades
while Western Europe provided the remaining 15-20
percent of weapons systems. Most of the Soviet systems
were manufactured under license in India, providing
for greater self-reliance.
"But the logical goal of defense cooperation must be
centered on the defense industry, especially
collaboration in design, development and production of
systems and sub-systems," advises Singh. "We need not
be over-ambitious and seek only frontier technology,
for which natural hesitations will remain. But there
is a vast area in low-end and middle-level military
technology where Indian defense industry
infrastructure and capabilities could be used [and
further built] to mutual advantage by both sides.
India's expanding private sector now has the ability
to play a vital role in this process. Our strength in
information technology also has tremendous potential
to deepen cooperation."
It would be a pity, however, if the burgeoning Indo-US
relations were to be scuppered by India-Pakistan
one-upmanship in Afghanistan. Talking about Indo-US
relations, US Ambassador in India Robert D Blackwill
recently said, "Washington has also decided to remove
the hyphen in its South Asia policy. The US is
determined to treat South Asia in a non-hyphenated
way. We are treating US-India relations separate from
any other relations. What we are seeing in US-India
relations is not connected to events occurring in
Pakistan."
Singh adds, "It would be wise for the mandarins
running India's foreign policy not to force the US to
hyphenate Indo-US relations again as Indo-Pakistan-US
relations. Afghanistan is important. So is our need to
reduce Pakistani influence in Kabul, so that it is not
used again to motivate and train terrorists. But we
should not jeopardize our growing relations with the
US in the process of securing our legitimate interests
in Afghanistan."
Some analysts decry India seeking entry into the new
Great Game on moral grounds. They also think that it
is against India's long-term interests. Achin Vanayak,
for instance, writes in the influential Hindu
newspaper, "India is seeking entry into a game where
it is at best a very minor player, where its role,
whatever else it does, will certainly exacerbate its
relations with Pakistan. That Pakistan, ruled by the
same kind of realpolitik thinking about 'outflanking'
or 'undermining' its rival, is also acting in ways
detrimental to its longer-term security considerations
can hardly be much of a consolation.
"The truth of the matter is that in South Asia, as in
West Asia, there is only one way to try and establish
an enduring stability and security. In West Asia it
can only come about through a just settlement of the
Palestine issue, ie, one which is ultimately
acceptable to the people of Palestine and therefore
not acceptable to today's Israel. In South Asia, there
will have to be a just settlement of the Kashmir
issue, that is, one that is acceptable to Kashmiris on
both sides of the border and therefore one that will
not be acceptable to the Indian and Pakistani
governments of today. But there will also be no
stability if priority is not given to the interests of
the Afghan people themselves rather than to
surrounding national interests," the newspaper said.
Part 2: Doubts over US sincerity
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Everything you'll ever need on one web page
from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts
http://uk.my.yahoo.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
( Melanggan ? To : [EMAIL PROTECTED] pada body : SUBSCRIBE HIZB)
( Berhenti ? To : [EMAIL PROTECTED] pada body: UNSUBSCRIBE HIZB)
( Segala pendapat yang dikemukakan tidak menggambarkan )
( pandangan rasmi & bukan tanggungjawab HIZBI-Net )
( Bermasalah? Sila hubungi [EMAIL PROTECTED] )
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Pengirim: =?iso-8859-1?q?hadi=20hadad?= <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
