Rumsfeld to visit South Asia

As President Bush toughens his talk, Rumsfeld will try to limit any war between India and Pakistan to one of just words.

By Washington Post
May 31, 2002

WASHINGTON -- President Bush on Thursday used his toughest language in demanding that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf choke off the incursions of Islamic militants into Indian-held territory that are threatening to trigger warfare between the nuclear-armed rivals.

Bush announced that he was dispatching Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to India and Pakistan next week, underscoring the administration's deepening concern that the military standoff is on the brink of warfare and diverting Pakistani troops required for flushing out fugitive al-Qaida fighters.

Rumsfeld's mission would follow that of Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, scheduled to travel to South Asia on Tuesday, and mark a calculated escalation of U.S. diplomacy.

With British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw completing a visit to the region Thursday and another British envoy likely to follow Rumsfeld, the United States and its allies are seeking to keep India and Pakistan talking until the arrival of the monsoon season in July, administration officials said. Officials are concerned that India might be tempted to launch an attack before the coming of the rains makes fighting more difficult.

Bush's warning to Musharraf represented a notable change in tone. U.S. officials have praised Musharraf since he agreed under American pressure last fall to cut Pakistan's sponsorship of the Taliban movement in Afghanistan and sign on to the antiterrorism campaign against al-Qaida.

"We're a part of an international coalition applying pressure to both parties, particularly to President Musharraf," Bush said. "He must stop the incursions across the Line of Control. He must do so. He said he would do so. We and others are making it clear to him that he must live up to his word."

Musharraf promised again in recent days to crack down on the infiltration of militants into the Indian-controlled portion of disputed Kashmir. But U.S. and Indian officials, who have heard similar pledges before, said they are looking for proof that Musharraf's orders are filtering to the field.

"He has now given assurances again, and these assurances are more positive, and we hope he is now giving the necessary orders and taking all the necessary actions to stop the infiltration," Secretary of State Colin Powell said on PBS's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. "If we see that, if everybody can detect the end of this kind of infiltration activity, then we have a basis for calling upon the Indians to start moving in the other direction, with respect to their mobilization and preparation for attack action."

Rumsfeld acknowledged that the decision to send him to Islamabad and New Delhi reflected the administration's growing worry about tensions between India and Pakistan escalating into war. "There's no question but that I would not be going on this visit if we were not concerned about the situation between these two countries," he said.

The announcement of Rumsfeld's trip coincided with reports that Pakistan was moving troops away from the Afghan border to bolster defenses along the border with India. Rumsfeld said he had seen no sign of a redeployment, and presumably one of his main objectives will be to try to cushion the effect of any such Pakistani move on U.S. efforts to root out al-Qaida and Taliban remnants that have fled across the border.

"The number of Pakistani battalions that have been located along that Afghan border has not changed," Rumsfeld said. "And we hope it will not change."

Other Pentagon officials said one important effect of the war fever in the region has been suspension of a Pakistani plan to shift several battalions from eastern areas near India to the tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan to reinforce the several thousand troops there. The move had just begun when an attack two weeks ago blamed on Pakistan-based militants in Kashmir killed at least 30 Indians. The United States says it has intelligence that al-Qaida figures are in the tribal regions.

While declining to provide specifics on how U.S. forces would react to a sharp reduction in Pakistani military assistance along the Afghan border, Rumsfeld said American troops would "have to be more attentive inside Afghanistan."

One significant source of leverage that administration officials believe they have in forestalling a war is the presence of about 1,000 U.S. Army and Air Force troops spread among three bases in Pakistan.

Another sign of U.S. unease about the five-month standoff was the State Department's decision to review whether to allow U.S. diplomats to leave India or, going further, order their departure. Officials said on Thursday no decision had been made. The State Department last week issued a travel advisory asking U.S. citizens to defer travel to India and suggesting that the estimated 60,000 Americans in India consider departing.

"For the most part, people would have to get out on their own" on commercial aircraft, Rumsfeld said, emphasizing that no decisions have been made for evacuations.

Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S. military stood ready to provide aircraft and other assistance if necessary.

The State Department ordered two months ago that nonessential U.S. officials and family members leave Pakistan because of the threat of war and a series of militant attacks on Americans and other foreigners.

U.S. military planners are in India and Pakistan working with American diplomats to assure that evacuation plans for American citizens are up to date, Pace said.

U.S. troops, well fortified against potential terrorist attack, aren't taking additional measures to gird for war between India and Pakistan, defense officials said Thursday. Nor has the Pentagon sent additional ships or aircraft to the region in anticipation of an evacuation.

The prospect that a conventional war in South Asia could turn nuclear would make a vast evacuation daunting.

A U.S. intelligence assessment completed last week estimated that a nuclear war between Pakistan and India could result in up to 12-million people killed and 7-million injured in just the initial minutes. Millions of additional casualties could result from related firestorms and such longer-term consequences as starvation and radiation poisoning.

Powell said he had only begun speaking with Musharraf this week about the devastation and international condemnation that would follow use of nuclear weapons. Powell said that in such a volatile situation, there are no "ironclad guarantees" that Pakistan would forego their use.

But he said, "I think both of these leaders understand the grave consequences associated with the use of nuclear weapons in the event of a conventional conflict between the two of them, what starts out as a conventional conflict. And I think they are both sobered at the moment by what those consequences are."

Rumsfeld indicated that one of the objectives of his visit will be to impress on both sides the risks of allowing tensions to escalate into armed conflict. "It is important that people work off the same set of facts and the same sheet of music, and that having a relatively clear understanding about what the implications of various things might be is a useful thing," he said.

-- Information from the Dallas Morning News was used in this report.

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