The imperative of restraint

THIS IS NO time for brinkmanship in the subcontinent. With the U.S.-led campaign entering a very decisive phase, there is, instead, a desperate, urgent need for India and Pakistan to tone down their rhetoric and continue the policy of restraint that has generally characterised their stances since the September 11 terrorist strikes. The ominous prognostications coming from the Vienna-based U.N. watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, cast a special responsibility on the two nuclearised neighbours not to say or do anything that can exacerbate tensions and heighten the dangers of a conflagration. It is in this context that one must express grave apprehensions over the war of words that has erupted between the two countries. The open charges and counter-charges in the past few days of troop movement along the border and the sorry spectacle of the United Nations military observer in Kashmir making totally unacceptable remarks and then apologising for them have tended to surcharge the atmosphere. Pakistan has said that these are routine military exercises which take place around this time every year. If India has reason to doubt the statement, it has ways of seeking clarifications and delivering diplomatic protests even as it takes counter measures. Both countries have also set in place confidence-building tools, including the hotline between the Directors-General of Military Operations, which should be utilised to clarify the position and defuse tensions. There is nothing to gain by going public and provoking panic. Islamabad needs to realise too that appeasing domestic constituencies cannot come at the cost of the national, and international, good.

In these extraordinarily troubled times, when the maximum of restraint and caution should be exercised particularly in sensitive border areas such as the Chicken Neck in the Jammu region, the public posturing of the type being witnessed helps neither side. There is the real danger on the contrary of the situation spinning out of control. It is the felt concern that one misstep by either country has the potential to spark a conflagration, with catastrophic consequences for the region and the world, that has seen the avalanche of VVIP visits to India and Pakistan since the U.S. launched its campaign against Afghanistan. The leaders of the U.S., England, Germany and now France have all but one message to both countries: restraint.

Behind the message is the widespread concern over the nuclearisation of the subcontinent, a concern which has been immeasurably deepened by the daring September 11 attacks in New York and Washington. The terror campaign has introduced a new element of potential disaster: nuclear material falling into the hands of terrorists. This heightened concern, verging on panic in some capitals, is reflected in the stark warning from the IAEA. The agency's Egyptian-born director, Muhammad el-Baradei, has spoken of how the international community is not just dealing with the possibility of Governments (running those ``rogue'' states) diverting nuclear material into clandestine weapons programmes. The world has now been exposed to the potential of terrorists targeting nuclear facilities or using radioactive sources to incite panic, contaminate property and even cause death among civilian populations. The disturbed conditions in Pakistan and the presence and power of the fundamentalist terrorist groups there are a particular source of concern to the international community. The Pakistani Foreign Minister, Mr. Abdul Sattar, has declared that his country's nuclear arsenal is in safe, foolproof custody. This is reassuring but the world will continue to watch warily to see if nations have the resources to prevent the explosive match of the terrorist and the nuclear bomb.

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