Quit, then talk — US to Pak

Asked if India was justified in taking the position that it will not entertain talks with Pakistan till the withdrawal process is complete, Inderfurth said, “I think that is a fair position. The remaining militants that are on the Indian side of LoC should disengage immediately and bring this crisis to a conclusion. Unless they do, there is always a risk of something going wrong. Clearly they should depart or they will leave one way or the other — either in the dead of the night or dead,”Inderfurth added.

Inderfurth remained behind in Washington last week to work — along with the visiting US ambassador in New Delhi Richard Celeste — on the rapidly evolving situation vis-a-vis India. Matt Daley, another senior state department official, accompanied Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to Singapore for talks with India’s External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh. The State Department on Thursday summoned Pakistan’s ambassador in Washington Riaz Khokhar to convey its disapproval over the continued presence of intruders on the Indian side of the Line of Control and the killings of innocent civilians by terrorists. Khokhar reportedly complained about the one-sided attitude of the US officials who were not taking note of the excesses by the Indian army and security forces. Khokhar is also said to have pointed out to the distortion by India of the Clinton-Sharif joint statement. While the statement was confined to Kargil, New Delhi had expanded its meaning to insist that there would be no talkstill Pakistan committed to the inviolability of the Line of Control and stopped encouraging the alleged cross-border terrorism.

But US officials here seem to back India’s stand of getting Pakistan to honour the sanctity of the LOC before any further talks. Asked how soon Washington expected the talks to resume given what New Delhi says is Pakistans perfidy and betrayal of trust, and whether there was any US pressure to resume the dialogue immediately, Inderfurth said there was no pressure and the talks were best resumed when it could be productive.

“There is no reason to resume a process unless it is going to be a productive one. How soon it can be productive will have to be determined by the parties themselves,” he said. Inderfurth however said the matter had to be addressed sooner rather than later. “There is no question that these issues must be addressed or there will be further crises down the road. These issues are not going to go away,” he said.

`Expect more Kargils’

ISLAMABAD:Pakistan today urged the world community to put pressure on India to resolve the Kashmir issue even as Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called for unconditional resumption of talks. Any delay in resolution of the Kashmir issue may lead to more of Kargil-type problems, Information Minister Mushahid Hussain told reporters. The hard talk came on a day when tens of thousands of fundamentalists marched through the streets of Sharif’s hometown Lahore demanding his immediate ouster for calling back the intruders from Kargil.