POLITICS: India Says Will Support U.S. Strikes vs bin Laden

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Sep 15 2001 (IPS) - India has pledged unconditional support for a possible retaliatory strike by the United States against the Afghanistan-based Osama bin Laden for the terrorist strikes in New York and Washington.

In a televised address on Friday, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee reiterated a pledge of cooperation he made in a message to President George Bush hours after the Tuesday attacks.

“We stand ready to cooperate with you in the investigations into this crime and to strengthen our partnership in leading international efforts to ensure that terrorism never succeeds again,” Vajpayee said.

So far, Vajpayee has received no response from Bush but foreign ministry spokesperson Nirupama Rao said the prime minister was scheduled to talk to Bush “very shortly.”

Washington has relayed to Pakistan, India’s neighbour and arch- rival, a list of measures it wants Islamabad to follow as part of its campaign to punish the suspects in last Tuesday’s suicide attacks in the United States.

Among those measures, reports say, is the use of Pakistani air space for possible attacks against camps in the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, where bin Laden has been granted safe haven.

India has already begun sharing intelligence on jihadist training camps set up along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border with the U.S. according to officials here. Detailed maps gleaned from a decade of fighting jihadist groups in Kashmir have been handed over, they said.

Linking violent militancy in Kashmir to Tuesday’s attacks, Vajpayee said that “the poison that propels mercenaries and terrorists to kill and maim in Jammu and Kashmir will impel the same sort to blow up people elsewhere”.

Earlier, Jaswant Singh, who holds the key defence and external affairs portfolios, has also been quoted as saying that India was prepared to provide logistical support, or allow its territory to be used as a staging ground, for U.S. military strikes.

But spokesperson Rao clarified that actual participation in any U.S.-led action against terrorist groups would depend on a formal request from Washington. “The category of our actions will be predicated by the request (for assistance) from the U.S.,” she said.

“Our support will depend on the kind of request made by the U.S., if and when it is made,” she said and described Jaswant Singh’s offer of support for U.S. military action as “unconditional”.

Reports in Indian newspapers said Indian armed forces have already been placed on alert to assist in any U.S. military strikes against terrorist groups.

Meanwhile, Hindu fundamentalist groups have joined Vajpayee’s pro-Hindu government in pledging support for possible military action by the United States against jihadist groups in Afghanistan.

Making common cause, the Shiv Sena (god’s army) on Friday pledged the support of “millions of Hindus in India and abroad in the war against Islamic terrorism”.

The Shiv Sena, a close ally of Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was among Hindu fundamentalist groups which led the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya town in northern Uttar Pradesh state.

Jai Bhagwan Goel, Shiv Sena leader in northern India, said it was “high time these terrorists and their hard harbourers were finished off.”

“We (Indians) have been suffering the scourge of terrorism for the past 12 years,” Goel said, referring to the attacks by militant groups in the Muslim majority territory of Kashmir that is disputed with Pakistan.

But spokesperson for the secular opposition Congress party, Jairam Ramesh said the Vajpayee government needed to distance itself from fundamentalist organisations if it was going to be taken seriously by the U.S. administration.

“We cant have fundamentalist organisations running amuck and at the same time ask the U.S. to help us fight terrorism.”

However, Ramesh said the situation presented a “historic opportunity to forge a common front against terrorism in the region and to make the point that we are victims of the same type of terrorism that has hit America.”

India, which consistently opposed U.S. policy during the cold war years, has over the last decade embarked on a policy of economic liberalisation and matched it in recent years with pronounced pro-Washington tilt.

In his televised address on Tuesday, Vajpayee said the U.S. and India have begun to “deepen their cooperation for combating terrorism.” He added: “We must redouble these efforts.”

“We must strike at the roots of the system that breeds terrorism. We must stamp out the infrastructure that imparts the perverse ideological poison by which the terrorist is fired up. We must hold governments wholly accountable for the terrorism that originates from their countries.”