NEW DELHI: US envoy Richard Holbrooke said here on Wednesday that he sees
peace in the region possible only with India’s active support to the efforts
undertaken by Pakistan and Afghanistan, but he ruled out nudging New Delhi
to resume bilateral talks with Islamabad as a step in that effort.
‘We cannot settle issues like Afghanistan and many other issues without India's
full involvement and its own expression of views,’ Mr Holbrooke said after
meeting Indian officials.
Indian analysts noted, however, that though he denied offering any role as
mediator between India and Pakistan, Mr Holbrooke had held talks with Mr
Satinder Lambah among the officials he met on Wednesday.
Mr Lambah has been a back channel negotiator on Kashmir and was recently named
India’s representative at an international conference on Afghanistan.
Mr Holbrooke, who held talks with Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon and
National Security Adviser M K Narayanan, stressed that he was not here to
negotiate between India and Pakistan.
‘The answer is no,’ he told a news conference here in response to a question
whether he had urged India to resume talks with Pakistan.
‘Let me just be clear on my one word answer. We did not come here to ask the
Indians to do anything. We came here to inform about our trips (to Afghanistan
and Pakistan) as we always do and to get their views. We did not come here with
any requests,’ said Mr Holbrooke. He addressed the press along with US Chairman
of Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen.
Everyone in this part of the world should recognise that India, Pakistan and the
US face a common threat and a common challenge ‘and we have a common task,’ he
said.
Acknowledging that there was ‘history’ between India and Pakistan as well as
between Pakistan and Afghanistan, he said ‘but now as we face a common threat,
we must work together.’
He said the United States was ‘working intensively with our friends in Pakistan
to achieve a common goal. That is what we are doing. We know it's going to be
difficult but the national security interests of all three countries are clearly
at stake.’
Pakistan is at the centre of the common fight, Mr Holbrooke said. ‘What happens
in Afghanistan is profoundly affected by what happens in Pakistan and the two
issues are deeply inter-related.’
He voiced concern over the peace deal between government and Taliban in Swat
region of Pakistan and said the worries had been further raised after terror
attacks on Sri Lankan cricket team and police training centre in Lahore.
He described Baitullah Mehsud, chief of Pakistani Taliban as ‘a terrible man’
and ‘a great danger to Pakistan, Afghanistan ... He (Mehsud) is as bad as any
bad actor in a very dangerous region.’
