India isolated as Pak, US discuss Afghan endgame

As Pakistan and the US begin their most comprehensive engagement over the endgame in Afghanistan, with Islamabad hoping to cut a civil nuclear deal with Washington as part of the bargain, India stands isolated.

Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi will lead a large delegation to talks with US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton at the State Department tomorrow. During this meet, the star attraction will be Pakistan army chief General Ashfaq Kayani. Kayani, who met US Defence secretary Robert Gates at Pentagon today, is expected to have already set the stage for the dialogue.

Pakistan is touting itself as a major broker, telling the Americans that it will use its influence with the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban to cut a deal with them, to make way for the US and other NATO-led forces to withdraw from Afghanistan as soon as possible.

Highly placed government sources, here, confirmed, that the Indian establishment, led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, has not conveyed its concerns to Obama about Pakistan’s attempt at cutting India out of Afghanistan.

“The Pakistanis are putting a gun to their own head and telling the Americans that they are willing to take the risk of going down — victims of terrorism and all — but in that case the US will also have to take responsibility for letting it happen,” government sources said, adding, “We have to admit that for all of India’s partnership with the US, Delhi hasn’t been able to convince Washington that it should not look at the Afghanistan problem only through the Pakistani prism.”

The sources, however, emphasised the silver lining in the emerging scenario: India’s presence in Afghanistan, cutting across all 34 provinces, is significant. “Even the Americans realise that if they tell India to back off, it would mean cutting the ground beneath their own feet.”

The mild-mannered Kayani, who in the aftermath of the Benazir Bhutto assassination in end-2007 withdrew the Army officers from the political arena, giving

rise to the belief that the Army wanted to take a back seat to the elected government in Islamabad, has already made it clear that Pakistan must play a central role in the Afghanistan endgame.

In fact, Kayani met a number of US military commanders in Florida on Monday and indicated that the US draw-down from Afghanistan could even begin in the summer of 2010, instead of 2011, as US President George Bush had indicated in his West Point academy speech in December 2009.

Central to Pakistan’s demand to the US to play the premier role in Afghanistan is the concomitant wish : It will be “unhelpful” if India continues to maintain its large presence in Afghanistan.

The sources also stressed that the core of Pakistan’s demands is about wielding primary influence in Afghanistan. As for its interest in obtaining a civil nuclear deal, just like India got one with the Bush administration, Islamabad knows that despite the Pakistani petition in the high court seeking to investigate AQ Khan’s linkages with Iran’s nuclear programme, the US is not likely to reciprocate.

“The US will certainly want access to AQ Khan himself, which begs the question : Are the Pakistanis willing to give him up? I doubt it very much,” noted strategic affairs expert G Balachandran told Business Standard.