Finally, India146;s on Page 1!

Warning bells are clanging the loudest in the British media. 8216;8216;There is talk of war in the autumn, when the summer heat has abated and the monsoon is over8217;8217;, THE DAILY TELEGRAPH fretted in an editorial. The paper is counting on the heat and rain along the Indo-Pakistani border to allow Washington a few months in which to 8216;8216;turn the protagonists back from the brink8217;8217;.

In yet another editorial, it spelt out the N-question: 8216;8216;If hostilities break out afresh between India and Pakistan, what is the chance that the war will turn nuclear?8217;8217; According to the paper, the sheer proximity of the two countries should be sufficient deterrence. 8216;8216;If there is any sanity in those who run the subcontinent, the logic of nuclear deterrence must prevail.8217;8217; Note the ostentatious 8216;if8217;.

Edward Luce warned in the FINANCIAL TIMES that the situation is not parallel to the nuclear stand-off between the US and Soviet Union. The differences, he said, are: unlike the US and Soviet Union, India and Pakistan do not have intimate knowledge of each other8217;s nuclear command and control systems; they have not established an early warning system; and with the 8216;Islamic bomb8217; controlled by the army and the 8216;Hindu bomb8217; by a civilian prime minister, there is great scope of miscommunication.

It was the 8216;8216;shamelessly expedient friendship8217;8217; the US and Britain have struck up with Pakistan8217;s 8216;8216;suave military dictator8217;8217;, argued THE GUARDIAN8217;s Luke Harding, that has moved the region back to the brink. The west should persuade Gen Musharraf to call off the jihad in Kashmir, he said, or take back the generous loans given last year as a reward for dumping the Taliban.

In all the comment, the onus for defusing the crisis remained, by and large, on Musharraf. But New Delhi wasn8217;t entirely off the hook. Fears were expressed that the Vajpayee government may have talked itself into a place from where it may find it difficult to retreat.

But when British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw announced his trip to the subcontinent, to do his bit to dispel the war clouds, the British media sounded unimpressed. The FT tersely pointed out that 8216;8216;8230; it is only the US that carries real clout8217;8217;.

Ramallah still rules

The US media sounded relatively less alarmed about the tensions between India and Pakistan this week. Attention did veer towards what the WASHINGTON POST earlier described as 8216;8216;the other crisis8217;8217; 8216;the8217; crisis being the one unfolding in Ramallah. But comment didn8217;t flow as fast and furious as it did in Britain.

8216;8216;India and Pakistan have come to the brink of war over Kashmir so often in recent months8217;8217; sighed THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, 8216;8216;that it8217;s tempting to assume that no one8217;s ever actually going to leap off the cliff and plunge on down into the Vale of Tears8217;8217;. It attempted evenhandedness in distributing the blame there8217;s more than enough, it noted drily, to go around. Between Pakistan where President Musharraf 8216;8216;either can8217;t or won8217;t honour his January promise to crack down on the terrorists responsible for such outrages8217;8217;. And the Vajpayee government which 8216;8216;has escalated the rhetoric so many times and drawn so many lines in the sand that he has restricted both sides8217; room to manoeuvre8217;8217;.

Like others in the US media, the WSJ was more unequivocal on another count 8212; 8216;8216;when weak leaders of nuclear powers cannot muster the statesmanship to alter a collision course, the US has no choice but to mediate8217;8217;. The NEW YORK TIMES seized the opportunity to assert that India has 8216;wrongly8217; rejected the idea of outside intervention by the United States.

Going against the current, influential WASHINGTON POST columnist Jim Hoagland flayed Washington8217;s role in the crisis so far. The Bush administration, said Hoagland, had contributed to the dangerous confrontation by mis-reading Musharraf. 8216;8216;Musharraf has dared India to fight,8217;8217; he said, 8216;8216;and he has just as boldly reneged on a promise to the Bush White House to shut down terror camps in Kashmir8217;8217;. Managing Musharraf and Pakistan8217;s role in Operation Enduring Freedom was always going to be a tricky thing, he noted, but Powell and his aides also erred in devoting too little time and energy to that job since mid-February. Now, unless he is confronted with 8216;unrelenting pressure8217;, Musharraf will keep on gambling up to the brink. And, he added ominously, perhaps beyond.

But, by and large, the US media was candid about Washington8217;s main reason for concern. Large-scale fighting was to be avoided in the region because it would be a huge distraction to the US and its allies in the 8216;war on terror8217;. The NEW YORK TIMES worried, for instance, that Pakistan is preparing to shift troops from the border with Afghanistan to the front in Kashmir. It said the move would constitute a 8216;8216;serious blow8217;8217; to Washington8217;s efforts to 8216;8216;wipe out Al Qaeda and Taliban8217;8217; in the 8216;8216;lawless8217;8217; border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

P.S.: From the GULF NEWS, an earnest plea for peace. 8216;8216;The time for fiery talk between neighbours is over. Both Musharraf and Vajpayee should ensure they and their spokespersons do nothing to escalate tensions8230; for the sake of the future of each country8217;8217;.