Dateline Islamabad: India up, Pak down on US agenda, feel Pakistanis

27 March 2000
The Times of India

India up, Pak down on US agenda, feel Pakistanis

By Siddharth Varadarajan
The Times of India News Service

ISLAMABAD: President Clinton's televised warning to Pakistan to
``meet the difficult challenges'' he outlined or else risk ``even
more isolation'' is forcing many Pakistanis to ask whether
Washington's ``most allied ally'' has finally hit skid row.

The contrast between the effusiveness of the presidential visit to
India and the unsmiling, peremptory nature of the stopover in
Islamabad could not have been more obvious. ``You just have to look
at the footage on PTV'', said Mahmood Sham, editor of the Jang.
Though it does seem as if Clinton was more candid in his televised
address than in his meeting with Musharraf, several analysts here
believe the speech is a sombre indication of where US-Pakistan
relations are headed.

Gen Mirza Aslam Beg, former army chief, claimed that Clinton was
essentially asking Pakistan ``to choose between Kashmir and peace''.
``India has cast a spell on both Clinton and the US administration,
an art which Pakistan does not possess'', he said. ``Now that the
US has cleared its position, Pakistan needs to differentiate between
friend and foe... We should renew friendship with old allies like
China, Iran and Afghanistan.'' Striking an equally angry tone, Hafiz
Mohammad Saeed, the ameer of the Dawa' al-Irshad, told The Friday
Times in an interview that Clinton's ``few-hour visit is an insult
to Pakistan''. He felt the US was looking to India both for
economic reasons and to ``prop India as a counterweight to the
growing influence of China.''

Taking a more nuanced view, Tanvir Ahmed Khan, one of Pakistan's
most respected foreign policy voices, said that overall, the US
President ``has lived up to his promise of assigning a much higher
degree of importance to South Asia''. But he agreed that there has
been a clear shift. ``What Clinton is doing is to strike a new
level of relationship - and a new hierarchy of relations - in which
India is on top and Pakistan's role has in a way got diminished'',
he said. Apart from India's size and clout, Khan feels ``there may
also be a strategic objective, of building a new equilibrium in Asia
where India can be cast in a balancing role with China.''

If Pakistan's ambassador to the US, Maleeha Lodhi, feels
Washington's growing relations with India are a good thing - ``there
is an opportunity for (the US) to inject restraint in India's
behaviour towards its neighbours'' - Gen Hamid Gul, former head of
the ISI, thinks the Indo-US relationship is bad news for South Asia.
``By showing that he is close to the Indian position on Kashmir,
Clinton is exacerbating tensions'', he said. ``It could encourage
those in India who are seeking a limited war with Pakistan.''

The Jang's Sham, however, believes that Clinton's televised advice
to Pakistan was realistic and sensible. ``Sabhi haqeeqat-pasand
logon ko unka khitab achcha laga hoga (all realistic people would
have liked his speech)'', he said. ``We should try and build our
country in a solid way. The Kashmir issue is holding us back. If
our only ally is saying this, we should be doing some rethinking''.

While acknowledging that Pakistan's relationship with the US was
``uneasy, limited and conditional'' and that ``a definition of their
relations still eludes the two countries'', Tanvir Khan cautioned
India against reading too much into the US President's statements.
``In his TV speech, Clinton certainly reflected some of India's
concerns'', he said, ``but all his public utterances have been
crafted with great care. There is a touch of ambiguity in
everything so that even when a message is being conveyed to one
country, the other country is also brought in.'' Rather than
explicitly taking sides, ``Clinton was playing the role of a
peacemaker.''

Gen Gul was more forthright in his advice to India. ``The Americans
are trying to corral the Indian mare into their stable'', he said.
``They are worried about Russia under Putin, and a possible
Russia-China axis which India could join. So they want to hold
India back. I know the US government very well; they are all
infidels. The Indian leaders are not clever enough to deal with the
US. They should know that anybody who gets too close to them will
always end up worse off.''

Dateline Islamabad: Clinton does some plain speaking

26 March 2000
The Times of India

Clinton does some plain speaking in Pakistan

By Siddharth Varadarajan
The Times of India News Service

ISLAMABAD: Sticking to a tight schedule that admitted no
possibility for soft-sell, President Clinton swung in and out of
Pakistan on Saturday to express his ``very real concern'' over what
the US officials say is the ``direction Pakistan is taking''.

In a 15-minute televised address to the Pakistani people, Clinton's
carefully-textured tone could not hide the bluntness of his message.
He stressed the importance of democracy and called on Pakistan to be
``secure in its borders, friendly with its neighbours''.

He appealed for a return to the Lahore process and said Pakistan
``must create the conditions to allow dialogue (with India) to
succeed''. On Kashmir, while he said he understood Pakistan's
concerns, ``international sympathy, support and intervention cannot
be won by provoking a bigger, bloodier conflict...No matter how
great the grievance, it is wrong to support attacks on civilians
across the Line of Control''.

According to White House spokesman Joe Lockhart, the talks between
Clinton and General Pervez Musharraf - both of whom were accompanied
by senior officials and aides- were ``straightforward, serious,
frank and very direct''. All told, the meeting, lasted 100 minutes.

Lockhart said Clinton stressed the need for the rapid restoration of
``civilian democratic government at the national level'' as well as
his ``four R's'' formula: restraint, respect for the Line of
Control, renewal of dialogue, and rejection of violence. Clinton
also told Musharraf that there was no role for the US as mediator in
Kashmir unless both India and Pakistan request it to play such a
role.

>From Lockhart's briefing - and from the more extended off-the record
observations made by a senior administration official -it would
appear that the Indian government's concerns over what it calls
``cross-border terrorism'' did not figure as prominently or
concretely in Clinton's talks with Musharraf as New Delhi might have
hoped. The only specific point US officials were willing to
disclose was Clinton's request for Pakistan's help in apprehending
Osama bin Laden and in tracing Don Hutchings, the American tourist
kidnapped in Kashmir several years ago by terrorists linked to the
Harkat-ul-Ansar. Asked whether the training camps run by the
Harkat-ul-Mujahideen came up for discussion, the official said,
``There was no commitment with regard to the H.U.M.''

At a Press conference later in the evening, Musharraf played down
the most contentious aspects of Clinton's televised address,
especially those relating to the use of violence to change borders.
``These issues never came up in my discussion with him''.

He, however, admitted that the issue of ``clemency'' for deposed
Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who is facing trial on
charges of treason and hijacking, figured in the talks.Musharraf
said his response was that the case is in the court.

According to a Pakistani source, the Clinton-Musharraf talks yielded
nothing concrete as far as the Americans were concerned. ``The
general gave no timetable for the restoration of democracy, nor did
he give in to what the US wanted on proliferation, terrorism and
Kashmir''. If this assessment is correct, it would seem as if the
Clinton camp consciously sought to drive home their message through
the president's televised speech. The draft was apparently worked
on till the last minute and gave a very different indication of US
policy than what Lockhart's anodyne account of the talks suggested.

Clinton's speech has certainly confused Pakistani analysts and
confounded the government. Judging from Musharraf's Press
conference, the `silver lining' is the repeated promise Clinton made
to remain engaged with the region and work to ``help both sides
restore the promise and the process of Lahore''. ``The context is
Kashmir'', insisted Musharraf. ``The US will facilitate matters''.

A somewhat prescient cartoon in The Nation on Saturday morning
summed up the ambiguity well. Clinton is shown saying ``We condemn
the violence in Kashmir''. The same remarks are reported by PTV as
``President Clinton has condemned state terrorism in Kashmir'' while
Zee says ``President Clinton has condemned cross-border terrorism in
Kashmir''. A joke, perhaps, but one reflecting the equivocation
that has characterised a lot of Clinton's pronouncements in South
Asia.

India and Pakistan have chosen to read whatever they want into his
utterances but in the process, what the US says has become the
subject of discussion and deconstruction. Which, at the end of the
day, is what mediation is all about.

Clinton in Islamabad: Stage set for blunt exchange of views

25 March 2000
The Times of India

Stage set for blunt exchange of views

By Siddharth Varadarajan
The Times of India News Service

ISLAMABAD: After a relatively laid-back tour of India, President
Bill Clinton arrives here on Saturday for what is likely to be a
fairly testy meeting with Pakistan's chief executive, General Pervez
Musharraf.

According to an official spokesman, the two heads of government will
meet twice along with senior aides. Clinton will also have a
15-minute one-on-one with the sole constitutional ornament the
military regime has to offer, President Rafiq Tarar, before making a
live televised address to the Pakistani people.

Though US officials have indicated that what Clinton has in mind is
a monologue rather than a dialogue on anti-American terrorism,
nuclear weapons and Kashmir- the three top concerns- the Pakistani
government insists it will use the summit-level meeting to put
across its point of view on the core issue of Kashmir. General
Musharraf has publicly disagreed with the US president's remarks
that ``elements within the Pakistani government'' were supporting
those waging violence in Kashmir, and any presidential lecture on
the matter is not likely to get very far.

Most of Clinton's public utterances in India revolved around the
need for ``restraint''. Though his words could be interpreted in
more than one way, Indian observers assumed that his remarks on the
LoC and the impossibility of a military solution to the Kashmir
problem were aimed mainly at Islamabad. Pakistani analysts and
ordinary Pakistanis as well have taken a different view, with some
insisting that Islamabad's stand on Kashmir and the need for
dialogue have been vindicated. What Clinton has done is to reaffirm
the centrality of the Kashmir dispute right there on Indian soil,''
a senior banker told this correspondent.

According to General Mirza Aslam Beg, former army chief and a
trenchant critic of Musharraf's coup, Clinton's advice on respecting
the sanctity of the Line of Control was primarily targetted at
India. ``Clinton's stress on the LoC has to be seen in the context
of what Indian leaders have been saying about the possibility of
`limited wars' with Pakistan,'' he told The Times of India.

However, he maintained that Clinton's five-hour visit to Pakistan
was akin to an insult. ``The US wants to develop a strategic
relationship with India. We stand nowhere, as a matter of fact,''
he said. But this imbalance was entirely Pakistan's fault, he felt.
``Whether it is democracy, the role of the army, the state of the
economy, we have made a mess of things. The enemy is not outside,
it is within....If somebody thinks we are not the kind of people
they want to have truck with, I think they are justified.''

The feeling that the Clinton visit will not generate much benefit
for Pakistan, at least in the short-run, is shared by others.
Mahmood Sham, the Karachi-based editor-in-chief of the Jang told The
Times of India: ``I am not expecting much; it's just that contact
will be revived.'' And how did he react to what Clinton had been
saying on Indo-Pak relations? ``Bhai pehle aap unhein chhodiye,
Phir ham dekhenge (First you let him go. Then we shall see)''.

Aziz Siddiqui of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a
non-official organisation, said there is no optimism or joy at the
fact that Clinton is coming to Islamabad after all. ``But, I
suppose given how hard India tried to prevent a Pakistan stopover,
there would have been widespread unhappiness had he not come. It
would have been seen as a rebuff not just to the government but to
the people of Pakistan.''

Siddiqui dismissed Musharraf's plan for the election of local-level
bodies, announced on March 23, saying that he did not have a mandate
to dictate such a process. ``The plan itself, with its partyless
framework, will divide and fragment the people further on ethnic and
tribal lines. It is completely self-contradictory.''

'Hero No.1' came, saw and was 'conquered'

23 March 2000
The Times of India

'Hero No.1' came, saw and was 'conquered'

By Mohit Dubey and Siddharth Varadarajan
The Times of India News Service

AGRA: At last, the world's Tourist No 1 can say ``been there, done
that'' when the guys back home talk about the Taj. Moving along
with a vast retinue of officials and security personnel, President
Bill Clinton swept in and out of Agra, spending nearly two hours at
the Taj Mahal before giving a motherhood and apple-pie lecture to a
small gathering at the nearby Taj Khema hotel on the virtues of a
clean environment.

The UP state administration did a marvelous job cleaning up the
approach roads to the Taj Mahal and beautifying the monument for
President Clinton but forgot one crucial detail: the multicoloured
underpants and wet towels hanging impudently from the Saheli Burj
just outside the main gate. The offending undergarments - which are
apparently on display every day - belong to the policemen who have
been billeted here for years, ever since some bright spark in the
government decided terrorists might attack the Taj. ``They've
painted and scrubbed everything,'' complained one shopkeeper. ``I
don't know how they forgot about the kachchas.''

With the administration taking no chances, Agra was turned into a
virtual ghost town. An ageing jamadar from the collectorate,
resplendent in a starched white uniform, said that in all his years
he had never seen so much fuss over a visitor. ``When Bulganin came
some 40 years ago, the whole place was spruced up. Par us time bhi
itna nahin hua tha.'' Did he think it was overkill? ``Ho sakta hai
sahab lekin kya karen. Clinton to world ka adhyaksh hai. (What can
we do? Clinton is the chairman of the world).''

ASI officials told The Times of India that unlike other celebrity
visitors, Clinton was as moved by the environmental damage the Taj
has suffered as by the marble monument's beauty. Seemingly
oblivious to the well-publicised marital difficulties the US
president has been experiencing, UP chief minister Ram Prakash Gupta
told Clinton, ``The Taj is a symbol of eternal love. I wish Hillary
had come with you.''

At the function, Clinton, departing from his prepared text to speak
extempore, urged India to pay more attention to the problem of
global warming. ``We don't have to choose between economic growth
and environmental protection,'' he said. ``The US won't ask India
to give up growth in order to reduce its emission of greenhouse
gases... But we should try and realise the aims of the Kyoto
Protocol.''

(In fact, the US Senate has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol
unless the administration is able to force ``meaningful
participation'' by large developing countries like India. Even
though the US uses 805 kg of oil equivalent per capita of commercial
energy compared to India's 40, the Indo-US joint statement on
cooperation in energy and environment signed in Agra on Wednesday
commits India - and not the US - to some concrete targets within a
specific time-frame.)

In his speech, Clinton kept referring to the Taj as a metaphor for
the environment and spoke of the damage the monument has suffered as
``marble cancer''. His ending, however, was pure kitsch. ``Taj is
a monument built in love. All important monuments are built for
love .... The most important monument we can leave for our children
is the earth. We should give it to them in the spirit of love.''

No sooner had he finished his speech than a song from the film Hero
No 1 blared over the PA system. Clinton came down from the stage
and met an assortment of celebrities who had come in to Agra for the
day, obviously out of concern for the environment. Then, to the
accompaniment of ``Tu mera tu mera tu mera tu mera tu mera Hero No.
1'', the presidential motorcade swept out, leaving the audience
wondering about whether it was UP chief minister Ram Prakash Gupta
or External Affairs minister Jaswant Singh who had chosen the music.

ffoto

Growing economy, burgeoning joblessness

17 March 2000
The Times of India

Growing economy, burgeoning joblessness

By Siddharth Varadarajan
The Times of India News Service

NEW DELHI: When a peon at the Institute of Economic
Growth approached Prof B.B. Bhattacharya for
help in applying for a permanent post with the Delhi
Municipal Corporation, he was only too glad to provide a
reference.

The peon returned later in the day looking
dejected. Four thousand applicants had turned up to fill the
40 posts advertised. ``There was complete chaos and
fist-fights broke out. No interview could take place and
the police had to be called to clear everyone away,''
said Bhattacharya. A small incident, perhaps, but one the IEG
economist considers symptomatic of an unemployment
situation that is getting ``explosive''. For, despite the
economy growing at five per cent every year for the better part
of the past two decades, job creation has lagged far, far
behind. Jobless growth', that bane of Europe, has reached
India in right earnest.

In the Rajya Sabha on Thursday, Prime Minister
Vajpayee agreed that joblessness had reached ``really
alarming'' levels. Blaming rising population levels and
the induction of new technologies for unemployment, he said his
government had a plan to create ``one crore new jobs
every year''.

Prof Bhattacharya is not impressed. ``How are
they going to create these jobs? Can Vajpayee force the
private sector to employ people? In the past, too,
governments have pretended to do something but nothing has
happened.''

Jayati Ghosh of JNU is equally dismissive,
arguing that unless public expenditure on the social sector
and infrastructure in rural areas increases and
policies hurting small-scale industries are reversed,
employment will not increase.

But just how bad is the employment scenario in
India? According to the Planning Commission, the
growth rate of employment in the organised sector has
declined from 1.44 per cent in 1991 to 0.46 per cent in 1998, the
last year for which data is available. Officially, the
national unemployment rate is around 2-3 per cent. But
since, as ILO economist Ajit K Ghose has argued in a
recent study, unemployment in India is a luxury most people
cannot afford, underemployment and part-time
employment should also be taken into account.

Based on data up to 1993-94, he concluded that
the "effective rate of unemployment'' was around
12 per cent and that the rate had not fallen despite the
economy growing at a faster rate. "One striking
fact,'' he notes, "is that the incidence of poverty is far higher
than the rate of unemployment, however measured, i.e. many of
those counted as employed are engaged in very low
productivity and low- income activities.''

According to Jayati Ghosh, the latest sample
survey data shows that the situation has since got even
worse. One clue: non-agricultural employment in rural areas,
which had earlier begun to increase, has now registered
an absolute decline. In urban areas, she says, the
elasticity of employment is close to zero, i.e. higher
output is not leading to more jobs. And finally, there has been a
big increase in casual labour and a fall in the labour force
participation rate.

Bhattacharya identifies the lack of investment
in human capital as one of the causes of the
unemployment crisis. "In East Asia, growth originated from improved
productivity, which in turn resulted from a better educated
and healthy workforce,'' he points out. "Here, the
government thinks benefits will trickle down from the top. There
is no attempt to invest in social infrastructure.''

Vajpayee and Clinton: A forced one-on-one?

15 March 2000
The Times of India

A forced one-on-one ?

By Siddharth Varadarajan
The Times of India News Swervice

NEW DELHI: According to an informed Indian source, the US was not
keen on a one-on-one meeting between President Clinton and Prime
Minister Vajpayee and had even struck off a planned encounter from
the list of final events being drawn up. It was only after the
Indian side insisted that a meeting take place that the Americans
reluctantly agreed to schedule the one-on-one. Even now, it is by
no means certain what shape the meeting will finally take, how long
it will last, and whether or not one aide each will be present.

While too much should not be read into Clinton's aversion to
spending time alone with Vajpayee - most likely the prime minister's
lack of loquaciousness is giving him pause for concern - New Delhi
is eager for a prolonged one-on-one because of the positive
symbolism such a meeting would generate. However, one-on-ones are
something of a mixed blessing. If the chemistry is wrong, disasters
can result. And if the chemistry is right, leaders run the risk of
being charmed into making commitments that may not be in their best
interest.

German chancellor Helmut Kohl used such a meeting with Mikhail
Gorbachov to trick the Soviet leader into agreeing to the rapid
reunification of Germany. Gorbachov kept his word but the
investments worth $80 billion that Kohl promised never materialised.
At Simla, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto promised Indira Gandhi a step- by-step
conversion of the Line of Control into a de jure border, only to
resile from his unrecorded commitment once he returned home.

One-on-one meetings between Indian prime ministers and US presidents
over the years have had mixed results. After Nehru's 1949
tete-a-tete with Truman, George McGhee, US assistant secretary of
state at the time, wrote: ``Nehru and Truman didn't hit it off at
all. Rumor has it that, in his first informal meeting with the
President, he was offended by Truman's extended discussion of the
merits of bourbon whiskey.'' This was the trip Nehru later summed up
with his memorable line: ``One should never visit America for the
first time.''

Nehru struck a good rapport with Eisenhower in 1956 but his
encounter with Kennedy in 1961 led the latter to describe it as
``the worst head-of-state visit I have had.'' John Galbraith
recalled later that the US president did most of the talking.
``Nehru simply did not respond.'' Arthur Schlesinger, Kennedy's
biographer, quoted the president as saying that talking to Nehru was
``like trying to grab something in your hand, only to have it turn
out to be fog.'' The fact of the matter is that this was the height
of the Cold War and India's views on issues like Vietnam, Berlin and
disarmament were sharply opposed to those of the US.

While Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi reportedly got on well with
Ronald Reagan, Narasimha Rao's meeting with Clinton in Washington
was considered painful. Jimmy Carter's one-on-one chat with Morarji
Desai in 1978 was also a disaster; Carter had been led to believe
that Desai could be persuaded to sign the NPT but Morarjibhai would
have none of it. As soon as the meeting ended, a frustrated Carter
told his secretary of state, Cyrus Vance: ``When we get back, I
think I should write him another letter, just cold and very blunt.''
Unfortunately for Carter, an open microphone picked up his remarks
and relayed them to the press.

Clinton's arriving, as bully or cheerleader?

9 March 2000
The Times of India

Clinton's arriving, as bully or cheerleader?

By Siddharth Varadarajan and Manoj Joshi
The Times of India News Service

NEW DELHI: With 10 days to go before Bill Clinton arrives in India,
the Vajpayee government doesn't seem to have decided which of his
personas it would rather deal with. Bill the bully -- whose
pressure on Kashmir and nuclear matters will have to be fended off
and diverted on to Pakistan -- or Clinton the cheerleader, the
rakish vacationer whose presence might be used to boost the image of
India abroad.

Above all, there are two questions which nobody has really answered.
What do we want from Clinton's visit? And, what do we think he can
actually deliver?

Try as it might, the government just cannot get away from a naive
fascination with grand strategy. Even though it was a foregone
conclusion, the US President's decision to stop in Islamabad has
also upped the stakes. One typically ham-handed sarkari response
being considered: The release of a White Paper on ISI activities to
coincide with Clinton's presence in the Capital.

As if he will read the headlines over breakfast and promptly declare
Pakistan a terrorist state. But once he is embroiled in regional
problems, it will be difficult to stop him from proffering his
advice on other issues. The danger, then, is that in trying to go
for minor and symbolic gains -- predicated on the US notion of South
Asia as a dangerous zone of conflict -- the Vajpayee government
could rack up real losses.

But if the government wishes to steer Clinton away from politics,
does it have the savvy to shepherd him into other, more profitable,
areas? Or should professional event managers be stepping in? The
Indian corporate sector is plagued by fears of how Clinton will vibe
with Vajpayee and other politicians.

The question on their minds: Will Clinton get the sanity check
Americans usually look for when they arrive in a strange country --
that crucial can of Coke for their soul -- or will he be overwhelmed
by ennui? That is why the guest-list for President Narayanan's
banquet has become a hotly-debated issue in political and financial
circles, with the latter of the view that CEOs and actresses would
go down better as dining companions for Clinton than the usual
dhobi-list of netas and babus.

Just as the government is guilty of exaggerating the political
significance of the visit, however, industry also runs the risk of
falling victim to over-blown expectations. Most financial analysts
believe Clinton's arrival will give a tremendous boost to their
brand equity, and bulls are already putting their money where they
think his mouth will be.

`New economy' firms are hoping the sight of Clinton having a good
time -- a sight that will duly be relayed back by the legion of
foreign journalists descending on the country -- will help to spread
the good word about India as a country the West can do business
with.

The irony, of course, is that journalists who parachute in are more
likely to do the obvious stories -- the `shocking contrast' stories
about slums co-existing with mansions, the `exotic India' stories
about elephants, mahouts and snake-charmers -- than panegyrics to
Indian dotcoms.

The average reader in Peoria wants sadhus and snakes; if at all,
Narayan Murthy and Azim Premji will be packaged for him as new
signposts of the exotic. It will take much more than a lame-duck
presidential visit to change his perception about India. For, as
any IT engineer worth his ESOPs will testify, chip sets are much
easier to change than mindsets.