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| India-Pakistan |
| Pak 'tests' another missile... |
| 2002-05-28 |
| Pakistan defied international calls for restraint and test fired a third missile, hours after British Foreign Minister Jack Straw arrived here in a bid to avert war with India. The danger, which India is acutely aware of, is that one of these "tests" could be the cover for targeted launch to lay a little devastation in support of a surprise attack. It's a game of chicken with potentially lethal results. Even if it is a test, if India doesn't believe it is, or (if they want to be duplicitous) professes to believe it's not, Pak could end up with fireballs where Islamabad, Karachi and hopefully Peshawar used to be. Straw's mission is part of intense international efforts to calm tensions between the two nuclear-armed rivals, who have a million troops massed on their border. Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Anatoly Safonov is also in Islamabad, pressing a proposal to arrange face-to-face talks between the Pakistani and Indian leaders, which has now been scuttled by New Delhi. And Japan dispatched an envoy, Vice Foreign Minister Seiken Sugiura, to Pakistan and India on Tuesday to bolster the mediation efforts. Perv is obviously counting on the international community to be the ones to stave off war, while he edges up as close to the line as he can for domestic purposes. Straw said after "constructive and and forthright" talks with President Pervez Musharraf that the Pakistani leader was aware he was expected to do more to clamp down on cross-border terrorism, which has fuelled the row with India. "Forthright" in diplatic terms means the conversation started out "Are you out of your mind?" |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |