Islamabad Seeks Washington’s Help as Pakistan-India Conflict Heats Up, but Washington Is Standing With New Delhi

Will America be dragged ever deeper into what appears to be a looming hot war between India and Pakistan? While Islamabad hopes so, New Delhi is saying thanks, but no thanks.“A threat of kinetic action is imminent,” the Pakistani ambassador to the United Nations, Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, told reporters Friday. America’s role is “very important,” he adds, because it’s “an influential and a big country and a permanent member of the Security Council, but also because it has traditionally had good relations with both Pakistan and India.”Specifically, Mr. Ahamad, whose country is currently a member of the UN Security Council, expressed the hope that America would help mediate a decades-old dispute over what he called India’s “illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir.”Indian officials say Pakistan was behind last Sunday’s largest terrorist attack in years, when gunmen killed 26 Hindu tourists at a Kashmir mountainous resort.Terrorism in that area heats up “every time Pakistan is in the UN Security Council,” the executive editor of India’s Hindustan Times, Shishir Gupta, tells the Sun. Two attacks occurred the last time Islamabad served as an elected Security Council member, in 2012-13, he notes, adding: “So I suspect they deliberately did this attack to raise the Kashmir issue” in the council. America is India’s closest ally, Mr. Gupta says, and it is the only country New Delhi would listen to, so Islamabad is begging for help, adding, “Pakistan has no other option but to ask for international involvement or mediation to somehow make India back off.” During a phone call this week, President Trump told the New Delhi prime minister that America “stands strong with India against terrorism, and Prime Minister Modi has our full support.” Secretary Rubio urged the prime minister of Pakistan, Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif, to investigate the “unconscionable attack” in Kashmir, the Department of State spokeswoman, Tammy Bruce, told reporters Thursday. In a separate call to India’s foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Mr. Rubio reaffirmed Washington’s “commitment to cooperation with India against terrorism,” Ms. Bruce said. “He also encouraged India to work with Pakistan to deescalate tensions and maintain peace and security in South Asia.”As Pakistan tightens its relations with Communist China, Washington is getting closer to India. For now, the Trump administration is mostly on the sidelines and seems to trust New Delhi’s leaders. Mr. Modi is a “friend of mine and also the nicest human being,” Mr. Trump told a podcaster a month before his November election victory. “On the outside, he looks like he’s your father,” he added, but on politics and security Mr. Modi is “a total killer.” When offered American help in mediating Indian conflicts with a “certain country,” Mr. Trump said, the premier’s answer was: “I will do it, I will do it.” India is not about to ask America to intervene, Mr. Gupta says, adding though that Washington might “have some intelligence information that maybe they’d be sharing with us.” Beyond that, Delhi is not asking for any outside help. “It’s the Pakistanis who are asking for that,” he said.Following the Sunday attack, Delhi suspended a 1960 treaty on sharing of the Indus River’s water, vowing that “not even a drop of water from the Indus River goes to Pakistan,” India’s water minister, C.R. Patil, said. Pakistan considers that move “an act of war,” Mr. Ahmad said at the UN Friday. The ambassador denied any connection between Pakistan and the terrorist attack. Islamabad already condemned it and asked for “an independent, neutral investigation,” he said. Mr. Ahmad also called on America to calm the situation and for Secretary-General Guterres to intervene. Pakistan, he added, reserves the right to convene an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council. Rather than aiding terrorism, Mr. Ahmad said, Pakistan is a victim of Indian-backed terror acts. He also speculated that last Sunday’s terrorist attack at Jammu and Kashmir might have been a “false flag” operation orchestrated by India. At Washington, though, officials seem more inclined to agree with India that Islamist terrorist groups, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is tied to Pakistan’s Inter Service Intelligence, are behind the horrific Kashmir attack. “We hope, frankly, that Pakistan, to the extent that they’re responsible, cooperates with India to make sure that the terrorists sometimes operating in their territory are hunted down and dealt with,” Vice President Vance told Fox News on Thursday. He also urged India to respond “in a way that doesn’t lead to a broader regional conflict.” Following the suspension of the Indus treaty, a military response is coming, according to Mr. Gupta. “The message will be loud and clear,” he says, and India alone will determine its next steps.

Islamabad Seeks Washington’s Help as Pakistan-India Conflict Heats Up, but Washington Is Standing With New Delhi

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