Our restraint is not weakness: India

At a time when there is a marked softening in the US administration’s stand on Pakistan, India’s foreign secretary Nirupama Rao did some plain-speaking in Washington. Rao made it clear that while Islamabad may have done its bit to placate the US and act against the Taliban and al-Qaeda operating from its soil, little had been done to assuage India.

She wanted to put New Delhi’s concerns before an American audience and to make the point that nothing has changed in Pakistan’s attitude to India.

“Our restraint should not be confused with weakness or unwillingness to act against those that seek to harm our people, create insecurity, and hamper our developmental goals,” Rao said at the Woodrow Wilson Centre, a renowned Washington think tank, on Monday.    

“We are a strong country and we possess the capacity to deal effectively with those that pursue destructive agendas against India and its people,” she said making sure that the message gets across to the Pakistan military that it cannot expect India to take things lying down.

Without taking any names, Rao referred to Jamaat-ud-Daawa chief Hafiz Saeed, who despite the UNSC prohibitions against such hate campaigns, had publicly threatened jihad against India at rallies in Pakistan.

Saying “aggressive pronouncements by persons identified by the world as terrorists continue to be made openly against India”, she hit home the point that there can be no distinction between the various terrorist outfits, “since they are now in effect fused both operationally and ideologically”.

While Pakistan’s military has been acting against the Taliban and al Qaeda, it has allowed the Lashkar-e-Taiba and sundry anti-India groups run free. She said India has been asking Pakistan to “act decisively to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism and to effectively deal with groups that perpetrate it” but got little response.

She spoke of New Delhi’s genuine desire to break the ice and make a fresh start. Rao said her meeting with Salman Bashir, Pakistan foreign secretary on February 25, was another such attempt by India to make peace. Having faced repeated terror attacks launched from Pakistan soil, the public mood in India was not for a “full blown composite dialogue”, which Pakistan
has been harping on. “Today, Pakistan claims that it is in no position to give us such a guarantee that terrorism can be controlled by its authorities,’’ she pointed out.

She mentioned India’s worry that the defence equipment being provided to Pakistan by the US would be used against India. “We do not have aggressive designs against Pakistan and we want it to be a stable and prosperous country. But we will be vigilant about our security. That is our sovereign right,” Rao said, adding that like the US administration, “India, too, is concerned at the terror infrastructure that has been allowed to be established, take root and be used as an instrument of state policy in our immediate neighbourhood”.

“Our heartland, our cities and our people are exposed to the threat of terrorism in a constant and almost unremitting way in a manner the US well understands, given the similar threats directed against the American people,” she said.

Aware that Pakistan is staking its claim to play a political role in Afghanistan and wants India to roll back its presence in that country, Rao devoted some time to New Delhi’s views on the current situation. India wants the US and Nato forces to remain in Afghanistan till the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces are eliminated. “We feel that it is vital for the international community to stay the course in Afghanistan,” she said.

Rao also expressed India’s anxiety about compromising with the Taliban. She advised the international community to exercise caution and said only those who give up the gun and promised to abide by the values of democracy, pluralism and human rights should be accommodated in the reintegration plan now being worked out by the Hamid Karzai government backed by the US. 

“There is every risk, otherwise, that the Taliban could resurrect themselves as they have done in the past even when we think they have been defeated or we are rid of their hardcore elements,” Rao warned.