US keen on normalising ties between India, Pak

WASHINGTON: Terming Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee''s peace overtures to Pakistan as "an imaginative political process," the US has said there has been considerable lowering of tension in the region following the initiative and that Washington is committed to encouraging normalisation of ties between the two countries.
South Asia has received less attention of late, "and I think that is good news." And what we have seen in recent weeks and months is a considerable lowering of tensions there. I think considerable credit ought to go to the Indian Prime Minister, Vajpayee, for initiating, I believe, an imaginative political process," State Department policy planning director Richard Haass told reporters here on Friday.
"We are soon going to have the visit of President Musharraf of Pakistan here to Washington. And I think, again, amidst a lot of challenges out there and problems, this is an area where, over the last few weeks and months, we have clearly seen progress, and obviously we are committed to doing everything we can to further encouraging normalisation between India and Pakistan," he said.
Referring to Afghanistan, Haass said that the US continued to work there to essentially build up that country and to "help it become, if you will, a normal country able to deal with all of its internal challenges."
Referring to the US decision to impose sanctions on Myanmar, Haass said what motivated the policy was, obviously, a sense of outrage over the deterioration in the domestic political situation, and whenever something like this happened, one was forced to look at all the available tools.
"And you begin with political and diplomatic denunciation, and if that doesn''t get you very far, and, alas, in this case it did not get us very far, the question is what next. So the idea of turning to economic sanctions is a natural next step," he said.
"And there, you have got to balance, on the one hand, the message you want to send - you want the government to pay a price - but you don''t want to necessarily penalise the people," Haass said.
"So what we have tried to do is to come up with a policy that sends a message, that doesn''t hurt more seriously more people than anyone wants to. It is not a perfect world, and the choice of instruments, if you will, here is limited," he added.
Haass further said that what would really help in regard to the policy on Myanmar was if others joined in. The impact of sanctions will ultimately go up dramatically if it is not simply the US.
"I do not have in front of me a list of Burma''s principal trading partners, but obviously it includes Europeans, China and others. And to the extent this action is multilateralised, that Burma realises that what it has done is politically unacceptable not simply to Americans but is unacceptable to the world community, then I think the government would be much more likely to change direction. So our goal right now is to multilateralise what has essentially begun relatively unilaterally," Haass said.