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If President Musharraf and if Chairman Arafat do as they are ordered, their regimes are both useful and the Americans will try to keep them in power if they can. True, the situation in Pakistan and the stature of Musharraf are very different from that of Arafat in occupied Palestine. True also that whereas Musharraf attempts to conduct himself with a fitting public dignity Arafat long ago reduced himself, on the public stage at least, to a kind of political clown mouthing repetitious inanitities and caring little for credibility. His latest antics, "I will for sure go to Bethlehem even if I have to walk" -- followed 24-hours later with nothing except his 100th+ promise about a "Palestinian State in 2002" (a promise he seems to make as surely as the New Year dawns) -- were just more of the same craziness we've come to expect from the man the Palestinian people are so tragically saddled with.
Musharraf is busy arresting those his Army and intelligence services have heretofore encouraged and financed. Pakistan is being threatened with destruction and it is not likely his sole remaining ally, China, will be able to prevent that should the combination of India, the U.S., and Israel decide their time has come to deal with the "Muslim bomb" and "Islamic militantcy". As for the situation in Kashmir, the brutal subjugation by the Indians there is likely to continue, even be heightened. Sooner or later the serious injustices done in Kashmir will have to be rectified, and a historical price will have to be paid; but at the moment the Muslim world is in a pathetic state of impotency and division and thus Pakistan faces tremendous challenges with little real support.
As for Arafat, he and his VIP-crowd of international jet-setting Palestinians have so terribly and corruptly "led" the Palestinian people only to further misery and sacrifice; squandering huge amounts of money, time, and international support for which they can never be forgiven. His is the legacy not of "Mr Palestine" but more of the famed American Indian Chief Geronimo, who finally met his end in a White Man's prison cell after being forced to surrender to the U.S. Army with still more lies about what would result. Sad thing about this comparison, Geronimo conducted himself with far more dignity, and immeasurely less corruption and repression, than does Arafat.
KATMANDU, Nepal - Associated Press - 5 January 2002: Pakistan's president shook hands with India's leader Saturday and called for "a journey of peace" by the rival nations, whose armies are on alert. India's prime minister responded by pressing his demand that Pakistan crack down on militants based on its soil.
"I extend a hand of genuine and sincere friendship to Prime Minister Vajpayee," Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said in a speech at a South Asian summit meeting in Nepal. "Let us together commence a journey of peace, harmony and progress in South Asia."
Stepping down from the podium, Musharraf walked over and offered his hand to Indian Prime Minister Atal Vajpayee, who appeared surprised but stood up and shook it with a faint smile -- the first handshake between the leaders of the nuclear-armed neighbors during the summit.
Later, however, Vajpayee walked right by Musharraf, looking straight ahead as he slowly passed him and left the stage.
Musharraf's call for peace came with tensions high between India and Pakistan following a deadly Dec. 13 suicide attack on the Indian Parliament. India accused two Pakistan-based militant groups and alleged they had support from Pakistan's intelligence service -- a charge Islamabad denies.
Since the attack, which killed 14 people including the five assailants, India and Pakistan have amassed thousands of troops along their 1,100-mile border, cut off airspace rights, slashed their embassy staffs and severed air, train and bus service.
The leaders have not held talks since a June summit that ended in acrimony. There were no indications they would meet separately during the Nepal summit of seven South Asian nations; Vajpayee met earlier with the other five leaders, but not with Musharraf.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, visiting India, expressed solidarity with its outrage over terrorist attacks and echoed its calls for Pakistan to neutralize militants. He said the dispute between India and Pakistan over the Himalayan province of Kashmir can only be solved through dialogue.
In his own speech at the Nepal summit, Vajpayee responded coolly to Musharraf's gesture, saying he had offered friendship to Pakistan in the past but was answered with deadly violence by militant groups India says Pakistan supports.
"I am glad that Gen. Musharraf extended a hand of friendship to me. I have shaken his hand in your presence," Vajpayee told the delegates.
"Now, President Musharraf must follow the gesture by not permitting any activity in Pakistan or any territory in its control today which enables terrorists to perpetuate mindless violence in India," he said.
In an indication of the bitter differences that divide the two nations, Musharraf said the global campaign against terrorism must maintain a distinction between "legitimate resistances and freedom struggles on the one hand, and acts of terrorism on the other."
Musharraf has used the term "freedom fighters" to describe the militants who stage attacks in India's portion of divided Kashmir, the only mostly Muslim province in Hindu-majority India. Vajpayee calls them "terrorists."
Vajpayee called on Pakistan to abide by a recent U.N. resolution that prohibits any active or passive support of terrorist groups, and he dismissed Musharraf's contention that governments need to address economic and social reasons for the despair that leads to violence.
"Terrorism uses different religious, territorial, economic and ethnic justifications in different countries," Vajpayee said.
Blair, speaking in Bangalore on Saturday, drew on the language he used to condemn the Sept. 11 attacks to denounce the Parliament attack and a deadly Oct. 1 raid on the Kashmir legislature. "Today, as well as our business and trade links, we are joining together in the fight against terrorism. I want to express our total solidarity with you in the face of recent terrorist outrages in India," Blair said.
Addressing the dispute over Kashmir -- the flashpoint of two wars between India and Muslim Pakistan since it was divided between them after independence from Britain in 1947 -- Blair said, "Only politics, not terror, can solve issues like this."
"And the starting point of any dialogue must be the total and absolute rejection of actions such as those of 1 October and 13 December," he said.
Other governments are trying to get Musharraf and Vajpayee to hold discussions to ease tension. Secretary of State Colin Powell said he may send an envoy next week to "encourage them to talk to one another," and Blair is to meet with Vajpayee on Sunday and Musharraf on Monday.
Pressured by both India and the United States, Musharraf has taken steps against militant groups, but India has said it would not hold direct talks or ease its military and diplomatic pressure unless Pakistan does more.
Pakistani security agents announced Friday they had detained more than 130 Islamic militants, including leaders of the groups India blames for the Parliament attack, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Jaish-e-Mohammed.
"We strongly condemn terrorism in all its forms and manifestations," Musharraf said in his speech at the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation.
Pakistan-based militants have been fighting in Kashmir for 12 years, but the Pakistani government's support for the U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks has drawn attention to the groups on its own soil.
JERUSALEM - Associated Press - 5 January 2002: Israel renewed its ultimatum to Yasser Arafat on Saturday: arrest the assassins of an Israeli Cabinet minister or remain barred from traveling.
The standoff took on new importance with the approach of Orthodox Christmas celebrations in the biblical West Bank town of Bethlehem on Sunday.
"Arafat will not leave Ramallah until these people have been arrested," Gideon Saar, the Israeli Cabinet secretary, told Israel Radio on Saturday.
Eleven members of the Duma, the lower house of the Russian Parliament, will be part of a delegation accompanying Arafat to Bethlehem for Orthodox Christmas, the news agency Interfax reported quoted a Palestinian envoy in Moscow as saying.
Since Bethlehem was transferred to Palestinian control in 1995, Arafat, a Muslim, has attended both Western and Orthodox Christmas celebrations every year to underscore Palestinian unity.
However, Israel barred him from Bethlehem on Dec. 24, despite worldwide criticism, and said it would do so again unless he arrested the leaders of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a radical PLO faction that claimed responsibility for the October assassination of Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi.
"Arafat has still not arrested the commanders of the PFLP, who are in Ramallah, a short distance from his headquarters," Saar said.
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| Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2002/1/547.htm |