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up a fiendish general whose concrete record of covert and terrorist operations
against India parallels the mythologised record of…Osama bin Laden's terrorist
exploits'. 19 'The time for diplomatic niceties is over', an Indian diplomat darkly
observed on the eve of Powell's arrival in New Delhi. India, noted a New Delhi
correspondent, 'has reached the end of its tether'. 20
But worse was to come. On 13 December, an even more daring attack, this time
on the parliament complex in the middle of New Delhi, threw the region into a
full-blown crisis. Once again the Vajpayee government had no doubt that
Pakistan was responsible for the outrage. In the succeeding weeks tensions
escalated as Indian public opinion demanded an accounting. Air, train, and bus
service between India and Pakistan was terminated. India withdrew its high
commissioner in Islamabad for the first time since the 1971 Indo-Pakistani war.
The armed forces of both countries went on heightened alert and took up
advanced positions along the border. Initial American calls for restraint and
suggestions for a joint Indo-Pakistani inquiry into the incident were disdainfully
swept aside by New Delhi. The smell of war hung in the air.
Now genuinely alarmed that events were about to spiral out of control,
Washington moved forcefully to dampen tensions and to show New Delhi that
the United States took seriously its accusations about Pakistan's complicity in
the Srinigar and New Delhi attacks. The administration—remarkably belatedly,
in Indian eyes—placed the two Pakistan-based groups India deemed responsible
for the Srinigar and New Delhi attacks on the US list of terrorist organizations.
While not publicly accepting India's claim that the Pakistani government itself was
implicated in terrorist activities, Washington's words and actions clearly implied
that Islamabad could and must do more to crack down on terrorism.
Over a period of several weeks Colin Powell worked the telephones
assiduously, in what may represent the most intensive involvement ever on a
South Asian issue by an American secretary of state. Bush telephoned Vajpayee
as well, urging patience while emphasizing that his administration had no
intention of ignoring Indian concerns. L.K.Advani, India's powerful home
minister, and George Fernandes, the defense minister, visited Washington in
consecutive weeks in January. And Powell in mid-January made his second trip
to the region in three months.
In other ways as well, the experience of fighting a common enemy drew the
two countries together, even as the United States politely declined New Delhi's
offer of bases for operations in Afghanistan. Washington provided monitoring
equipment and sensors to assist the Indian army in preventing infiltration across
the line of control in Kashmir. In early December, the Indo-American Defense
Policy Group met to discuss joint military training and exercises, cooperation in
search and rescue, peacekeeping, and disaster relief efforts, and Indian
participation in missile defense exercises.
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