http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/25/international/25STAN.html At Tense Time, Pakistan Starts to Test Missiles By HOWARD W. FRENCH with RAYMOND BONNER [clip] Even with the Pakistani decision, however, tensions appeared to have lessened to the point where India's prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, felt comfortable enough to leave on a vacation he had postponed earlier in week to the Indian hill country.
Indian government officials said privately on Friday that they would give Pakistan more time, perhaps a few weeks, to demonstrate its commitment to stopping the infiltration of armed militants into India's side of Kashmir before undertaking any punitive military strikes.
India accuses Pakistan of sponsoring a two-decade proxy war by Islamic militants to drive India from the mostly Muslim region both nations claim.
Pakistani political analysts said the easing may reflect new commitments made privately through Washington by President Pervez Musharraf to effectively end his government's support and tolerance for Kashmiri separatists based in Pakistan. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell reportedly called General Musharraf twice on Thursday to press for such steps, which Indian leaders have been demanding under threat of war. [clip] "The missile tests are for domestic consumption, because they don't want the Pakistani public to think that they have made concessions to India under duress," said Najam Sethi, editor of The Daily Times, a Pakistani newspaper. "That is what Pakistan's tough language was about yesterday, too, that if India does anything, we will teach it an unforgettable lesson.
"This was in response to Vajpayee's language about a final war and a decisive battle," he added. "It sounds like tit for tat, but there have been huge concessions by Pakistan."
Under heavy diplomatic pressure from the United States and Britain, General Musharraf made a speech to the nation in January in which he declared himself "fed up" with religious extremism in Pakistan, and appeared to promise an end to violence by Pakistan-based Kashmir rebels. In the days that followed, hundreds of Islamic militants were rounded up, and the separatists' camps in the third of Kashmir controlled by Pakistan were reportedly closed.
Political analysts here say, however, that with Washington's attention focused on the campaign against remnants of Al Qaeda in neighboring Afghanistan, the monitoring of General Musharraf's commitments on Kashmir faded, and the camps gradually came back to life.
Pakistan's cooperation in Afghanistan is essential, and with General Musharraf vulnerable to criticism by Islamic voices that he sold out the country, and weakened by a highly flawed referendum extending his term of office, the analysts say, Washington has tried to be supportive.
"Musharraf must have concluded that the Americans have a huge stake in Pakistan now, and they will forgive a lot of things, including a little hanky panky over Kashmir," said Mr. Sethi.
"If so, there has been a miscalculation. They didn't expect India to marshal its forces, and they didn't expect America to take a standoffish stance in a way that would strengthen India's hand, not Pakistan's." [clip] http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/25/international/asia/25MISS.html In Pakistan, U.S. Embraces Friend of a Foe By HOWARD W. FRENCH [clip] Pakistan has never been a stable democracy, and leaders of the country's nuclear weapons program, armed forces and state intelligence services have long flirted with radical Islam. That flirtation remains a concern today.
In the weeks before Sept. 11, a 38-year veteran of Pakistan's nuclear program, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, was discovered to have visited with Osama bin Laden at least twice in Afghanistan, where the two are reported to have discussed nuclear weapons.
The director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, was so alarmed that he flew to Pakistan to inquire personally into the matter last fall. Mr. Mahmood was later placed under house arrest by the Pakistani government, although he has not been charged with any crime.
The Mahmood case provoked strong resentment in militant Islamic circles here, with television commentators and Urdu language newspapers condemning United States interference in Pakistani affairs, and warning darkly that Washington and its allies' hidden agenda is to destroy what many here call their country's "Islamic bomb."
One of the most fervent promoters of this viewpoint is Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul, the retired former head of Pakistan's largest intelligence body, Inter-Services Intelligence.
"This is an Islamic army. This is a nuclear armed army. And this is our army," General Gul said in a lengthy interview, in which he praised the Taliban as "absolutely remarkable" for having imposed what he called a crime-free Islamic order on Afghan society.
"Why should people be afraid of Pakistan's couple of dozen nuclear weapons," Mr. Gul said? "America is not concerned. India has never raised an objection. It is the Zionists who object, because they feel threatened and vulnerable. They think that an Islamic country should not have this." [end]