After Holbrooke, Hillary plans to visit South Asia

After the announcement of the South Asia visit of US Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, the State Department yesterday announced that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would also visit South Asia.

For now, Clinton’s itinerary includes Japan, Korea and China and the tour begins on February 15. Dates have not been fixed for her South Asia tour.

Holbrooke, on his part, has already begun his tour. After attending the 45th Munich Security Conference, which begins today, he’ll visit Pakistan, Afghanistan and India, in that order. The State Department said Holbrooke’s tour was an “orientation trip” and he would not deliver any “messages or lectures.”

In New Delhi, he would consult the government about ways to “contribute to peace and stability in Afghanistan” considering India’s interests in Afghanistan, said a State Department spokesperson.

To a question on Holbrooke raising the Kashmir issue, the spokesperson said, “Kashmir was never part of his portfolio.”

Meanwhile, former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf today told Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper that he would visit India next month on a lecture tour. Referring to India and the recent diplomatic spat between the two countries, he said: “Let’s counter the Indians on their home ground.”

Musharraf recently returned from a lecture tour in the US, where he raised hackles by saying the US and Pakistan had created the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda.

Musharraf said: “I made it clear to the Americans that Pakistan is doing enough in the war against terror. I warned them not to distrust the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence), which has played a key role in breaking Al-Qaeda’s networks in Pakistan.”