Bush Joins Putin in Urging Pakistan to Use Restraint

[Guest guest]

Bush Joins Putin in Urging Pakistan to Use Restraint

By DAVID E. SANGER and MICHAEL WINES

 

>From NY Times

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/26/international/asia/26PREX.html

 

St. PETERSBURG, Russia, May 25 — President Bush and President Vladimir V.

Putin of Russia jointly stepped into the India-Pakistan crisis today during

their one-day tour of this imperial Russian capital. Mr. Bush urged

Pakistan's president to "stop the incursions" of Islamic insurgents into

Indian-administered Kashmir, while Mr. Putin deplored Pakistan's decision to

conduct new missile tests and encouraged the Indian and Pakistani leaders to

attend regional talks next month.

 

 

Their joint comments during a tour of the Hermitage, including the Winter

Palace, which was stormed by Lenin's guards during the 1917 Russian

Revolution, marked the sharpest words Mr. Bush has directed at Gen. Pervez

Musharraf since the Pakistani president sided with the United States last

fall during the military action in Afghanistan.

 

Mr. Bush's aides have said that Mr. Bush has treated his new ally gingerly

in the past week, but Pakistan's test-firing today of a surface-to-surface

missile at a time of extreme tension with India caused him to speak more

forcefully.

 

[Pakistan's military reported that it had successfully test-fired another

short-range surface-to-surface missile on Sunday, its second test in as many

days.]

 

A total of one million troops have been massed along the border by the two

nuclear-armed countries, which have fought three wars since independence

from Britain in 1947 — two over Kashmir.

 

"We're deeply concerned about the rhetoric," Mr. Bush said. "It is very

important for President Musharraf to stop — do what he said he's going to do

in his speech on terror, and that is stop the incursions across the Line of

Control," which divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan.

 

Today, according to The Associated Press, the two countries traded mortar

fire, killing at least three suspected Islamic militants and two Indian

soldiers, an Indian Army spokesman said. An Indian Foreign Ministry

spokeswoman, meanwhile, dismissed the Pakistan missile test, saying, "It

could possibly be directed at domestic audiences in Pakistan."

 

Mr. Putin said that on June 3 he would attend a regional conference — at

which the United States is not a participant — where he hoped to meet with

General Musharraf and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee of India.

 

Neither leader, he noted, has yet committed himself to attending the meeting

in Kazakhstan, but it is seen as the natural opportunity to bring the Indian

and Pakistani leaders together at a moment when a separate meeting seems

politically impossible for the two men.

 

"The testing while there is escalating tension really aggravates the

situation," Mr. Putin said in comments that he clearly had coordinated with

Mr. Bush. "We shall be working together to take steps in order to prevent

the escalation of the conflict."

 

On a day of celebrating the depth of their new partnership, Mr. Bush and Mr.

Putin clearly reveled in demonstrating that they are working together on a

major international crisis, one in which the two countries would have taken

opposite sides during the cold war.

 

This afternoon, repeating a performance they first conducted at a high

school in Crawford, Tex., last November, the two presidents spent the better

part of an hour fielding questions from students at St. Petersburg State

University, where, remarkably, not a single questioner asked about the arms

control treaty signed on Friday in Moscow.

 

Instead, the discussion veered toward how quickly the United States would

lift export controls on high technology goods headed to Russia, when Russia

would be welcomed into the World Trade Organization, and how the two leaders

viewed themselves as managers.

 

But as the two men toured the majestic palaces of this city, and headed off

to a performance of "The Nutcracker" ballet with their wives and foreign

policy teams, the tension along the India-Pakistan border was clearly on

everyone's mind.

 

Speaking to reporters here this afternoon, Secretary of State Colin L.

Powell said, "I can tell you I am concerned now as I was" back in January,

when war seemed imminent but was temporarily defused.

 

"We've devoted a lot of time and energy to it," he said. "The key thing we

are looking for now is to shut down the action across the Line of Control

and hopefully that will give us a basis for seeing de-escalation on the part

of the Indians."

 

Mr. Powell said if there was calm on the border, there would be

opportunities for further diplomatic efforts to reduce tensions.

 

On another front, the secretary of state acknowledged that the White House

and the Kremlin had ended the working part of this two-and-one-half day

summit meeting essentially agreeing to disagree about American assertions

that Russian technology and labor are aiding Iran's efforts to build nuclear

weapons.

 

As Air Force One touched down in Moscow on Thursday evening, the

administration was declaring Russian aid to Iran to be the world's foremost

weapons-proliferation problem. Today, Secretary Powell said that Russia and

the United States agreed that they opposed the spread of mass-destruction

weapons to any nation, "and that includes nuclear-weapons technology to

Iran."

 

But Russian experts also argued that they are not only just as sensitive to

proliferation problems as Americans, but are politically closer to Iran as

well, and so better able to gauge the extent of those problems, Secretary

Powell said.

 

Secretary Powell also expressed concern that the United States has yet to

receive complete information from Russia on the security of its stocks of

nuclear, chemical and biological weapons materials and technology. That

issue will be a subject for the nations' defense and foreign-affairs

ministers as part of a special working group, he said.

 

<snip> the rest of the article wandered away from the topic of

India-Pakistan

 

 

yhs

Shyama

 

www.ShyamasundaraDasa.com