PAKISTAN-UNITED STATES: Albright’s Visit Reflects Differences

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - Nasim Zehra

ISLAMABAD, Nov 17 1997 (IPS) - U.S Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is arriving in the Pakistan capital Monday evening to reaffirm Washington’s commitment to an old friend, but analysts here have already dismissed the visit as of little consequence.

“Misplaced optimism in Islamabad may prompt Pakistanis to attach importance to it (visit),” says an Islamabad-based political commentator. “For Washington the secretary of state’s one-day trip to Islamabad is of limited utility.”

U.S interest in South Asia, commentators point out, has shifted since the end of the Cold War from Pakistan to bitter rival India. Economic compulsions have forced the realignment, they acknowledge.

Albright is also going to New Delhi and Dhaka, during her 10- day swing through Asia which started on Sunday in the Qatari capital Doha, where she stopped to attend the opening of an economic meeting, which the United States has encouraged.

She is already 24-hours behind schedule because she stopped longer than planned in the Gulf to meet with officials in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain, to get their support for Washington in its latest confrontation with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Albright is visiting South Asia to prepare the ground for President Bill Clinton’s early 1998 trip to the region, primarily to reinforce bilateral relations. Her agenda is similar to U.S Under Secretary Thomas Pickering who was here on Oct. 20.

Like Pickering she will be insisting that the United States is “dedicated to finding ways to enhance our relationship with Pakistan as part of our overall effort to try to build a new relationship in South Asia.”

Last week, State Department spokesman James Rubin told the press in Washington that, “In Pakistan she (Albright) will encourage the government’s commitment to democratic development, human rights and religious tolerance, and work with the Pakistani government to end the conflict in Afghanistan.

“In India she will be continuing our dialogue on strategic issues begun last month by Under Secretary Pickering, celebrating our shared and democratic heritage and advancing our objectives on environment issues, particularly global warming.

“In Bangladesh, she will encourage the further consolidation of democracy, promote further progress on development, women’s empowerment and child labor issues.”

The State Department’s tilt towards India has been apparent for a while. Albright’s visit, analysts observe, contrasts sharply with the last visit by a U.S secretary of state in 1988. Those days Islamabad was an ally, allowing Washington to fight a proxy war in Afghanistan against the Soviets from its territory.

Now the situation is reverse. U.S officials complain that the Pakistanis still look upon their relations with Washington as if some “cosmic play was on, they talk of being let down by the Americans although they should know that things will never be the same again”, a Pakistani independent expert comments.

Relations between the two countries have been bumpy. There are disagreements over Washington’s position on a cancelled military deal involving fighter planes and on Kashmir, the north Indian state that Pakistan claims.

Between 1990 and 1993, the then government paid 476 million dollars in installments for 26 F-16 fighter aircraft, but the planes have not been delivered because of a ban on arms sales to Pakistan for its reported clandestine nuclear weapons programme.

Successive governments in Islamabad have been trying to recover the money. They have also been lobbying in Washington to win U.S support on Kashmir.

But Washington continues to insist that the two countries will have to solve the dispute bilaterally, a position that pleases New Delhi. To Islamabad’s dismay, Washington has also been giving all the credit for the resumption of talks between the South Asian rivals to Indian Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral.

Galling as the situation is, political analysts in Pakistan say Islamabad’s ties with India cannot be dictated by Washington, and neither will a peace deal with India that is scripted by Washington work.

Ahead of U.S Secretary of State Albright’s visit, newspaper columnists have been quoting from a book written by her father, Joseph Conrad, who had spent some years in the region as a member of a U.N Commission for India-Pakistan.

‘Danger in Kashmir’, written by the Yale University professor in the mid-50s — the second edition was edited by Albright – has

been felicitated as “prophetic” in Pakistan.

Conrad’s chief observations that the will of the people of Kashmir must be heard, that the state’s accession to India cannot be considered as valid, bilateral negotiations might not lead to a settlement and the U.N has a responsibility to seek a solution, have been resurrected to bolster Pakistan’s claim on Kashmir.

Says an Islamabad-based commentator, Pakistan wants the United States to see the truth of the matter, and not dwell only on diplomatic niceties like its commitment to “democratic development, human rights and religious tolerance” in this country.