Vajpayee wades into Pakistan at the UN, tears apart Musharraf's speech
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CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA
Posted: Sat Sep 09 2000 IST
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NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 8: India's fury against what it considers Pakistan's campaign of terrorism and blackmail boiled over into scaldingtirade here with Prime Minister Vajpayee accusing Islamabad of hypocrisy, dishonesty, deceit, and perfidy all in barely-disguised diplomatese delivered in measured tones.
In two separate speeches, one at the UN General Assembly and another before Asia Society, Vajpayee used some really harsh diplomatic language to paintthe picture of a malingering, malevolent, and medieval neighbour totally out of sync with the modern world.
Pakistan has consciously opted to pursue the path of hostility by promoting terrorism in different parts of India as an instrument of state policy, Vajpayee told the Asia Society on Thursday night in the first of his several addresses in the US, only hours after landing.
On Friday morning before the UN General Assembly, he did not name Pakistan but asked the international community see through the hypocrisy of a country that stifled democracy at home and yet spoke of freedom, a country that repudiated covenants and now talked of new agreements to prevent war.
The acid test of sincerity of purpose is not words, but deeds. Terrorism and dialogue do not go together, Vajpayee told the UN.
Vajpayee's rebuff followed Gen. Musharraf's renewed offer of talks and a No-War pact in his speech yesterday. But the vehemence with which he lashed out at Pakistan and the blistering language he used surprised UN observers who have seen a more temperate version of the Prime Minister and his External Affairs Minister.
Even Jaswant Singh was waspish in his response,telling newsmen there is no need to respond to absurdities when asked about Gen. Musharraf's attempt to draw a parallel between East Timor and Kashmir.
Apparently emboldened by the Clinton Administration's assertion to The Indian Express that Pakistan has not done enough for India to agree to a dialogue on Kashmir, Singh pointed out that of the 63 heads of state who spoke at the UN yesterday, only two leaders mentioned Kashmir. And one of them was Gen Musharraf.
That is the index of their support, Singh told journalists during a trip around the Nasdaq Stock Exchange.
Old hands on the UN beat said if ever there is a diplomatic equivalent of slam dunks or pinch hitting, an angry Indian leadership went full tilt at it on Friday.
Instead of loftily ignoring Pakistan as it did in the past, the masters and mandarins of India appear to have decided to take on Islamabad sometimes directly and forcefully as the Prime Minister did in his Asia Society speech, and sometimes in a tempered way as he did in his UNaddress.
In fact, New Delhi's new gambit has begun to unravel in every single engagement in the 24 hours since the Indian contingent landed in New York. It will posit itself as a stable, democratic, progressive, liberal, mature country everything that an unstable, militaristic, regressive, fundamentalist and doomed Pakistan is not.
The protagonists of this terror campaign are known to the world. The proliferation of practitioners of medieval religious extremism in our neighbourhood is only one of the factors thathave contributed to cross-border terrorism, Vajpayee told the Asia Society in a scorching attack on Islamabad cloaking as Jehad its aggression on our civil society.
That terrorism poses as much a threat to all countries that subscribe to open society and democracy as to India, he warned.
At the UN, he twice made the point that democracy heralded peaceful co-existence, again a repudiation of Gen. Musharraf's contention last evening in an ABC interview that democracy was no big deal.
We cannot have true development without peace between nations and democracy within them. Indeed, democracy and peace continue to remain `the best guarantors for unhindered development each secures the other, Vajpayee said, aMong several remarks that seemed to be aimed at Gen. Musharraf.
Unlike Gen. Musharraf's UN address, most of which was a whiny India-centric lament on Kashmir and the neighborhood tension, Vajpayee's speech was morebroad-based. He presented India's familiar critique on nuclear proliferation. He also reiterated India's case for apermanent Security Council seat.
But trashing Pakistan seemed to be the days priority.
About the only concession, Vajpayee made was reiterating India's commitment to a composite dialogue. But for any meaningful dialogue, that country must demonstrate its commitment to existing bilateral agreements and abjure cross-border terrorism, he maintained.
The current leadership of Pakistan has time and again publicly repudiated both the Shimla Agreement and the Lahore Declaration, he pointed out.
Vajpayee speak at UN: Guess who heââ¬â¢s talking about
* Those who have stifled democracy at home, speak of freedom from this forum * Those who have engaged in the clandestine acquisition of nuclear weapons and delivery systems talk of ridding South Asia of these
* Those who have repudiated solemn covenants talk of new agreements to prevent war
* The authors of a vicious terrorist campaign thathas claimed more than 30,000 innocent lives in India, who actively sabotaged a historic peace initiative, are now offering new initiatives for dialogue
