Immigrants working as crop-pickers wait to be transferred from Rosarno, Italy, after clashes with locals in some of the worst episodes of racial unrest in years. Photograph: Tony Vece/EPA
Rosarno in southernItaly had, by last night, been turned into what one politician termed the world's only entirely white town after a bloody ethnic cleansing that produced scenes reminiscent of the old American deep south.
As bulldozers got to work to obliterate shacks belonging to the itinerant crop-pickers who had fled, the last of more than 1,000 such workers were being removed from the area for their own protection.
After two days and nights of violence that began with the apparently motiveless shooting of two African workers, the number of injured stood at 53, comprising 18 police, 14 local people and 21 immigrants, eight of whom were in hospital.
Some of the crop-pickers had been shot; others had been beaten with metal bars or wooden clubs as local people took indiscriminate vengeance after a riot of Thursday in which more than 100 Africans caused extensive damage in the town to protest at the shootings.
Those who fled included several hundred people who had agreed to be taken to government-run centres after reportedly being given assurances they would not be deported if found to be illegally in Italy.
But Silvio Berlusconi's interior minister, Roberto Maroni, said yesterday that they would, in fact, be expelled. "The law is implemented and nothing else can be done," he told a television interviewer.
A centre for asylum seekers near Bari took 324 immigrants, mostly Ghanaians. The city's prefect said that more than half of those whose cases had been examined had temporary residence permits.
New Delhi said this week it will adopt “quiet diplomacy” with every section of political opinion to find a solution to the problems in India-ruled Kashmir about four years after it opened a dialogue with separatist groups there. The response to the announcement is on expected lines — the moderates welcoming it and pro-Pakistan hardliners reminding any effort at peace without involving Islamabad would be futile.
Violence is at a low in Kashmir, elections there were largely successful and last year’s angry public protests against Indian rule have now subsided.
On the other hand, the security situation is at its worst in Pakistan and the war in Afghanistan appears to be in a decisive phase
The United States wants Pakistan to concentrate its military efforts on fighting the Taliban and other Islamist groups on its western border. For this Washington would like to see India and Pakistan reduce their tensions.
So could it be that international pressure was devolving on India to resolve the Kashmir issue and New Delhi’s latest offer for talks was only aimed at deflecting that pressure by giving the impression that it was engaging with Kashmiris?
Washington: President Barack Obama is expected to sign a defence bill, which includes tough new conditions linking $2.3 billion American military aid to Pakistan to fight against terror and not using it to wage war against India.
The president is likely to sign the $680 billion fiscal 2010 defence authorisation bill passed by the Senate 68-29 late on Thursday night despite objections to its funding for a controversial backup jet fighter engine. The House of Representatives had passed the bill Oct 8.
Among other things, the bill aims at ensuring that US military resources provided to Pakistan are not squandered or diverted to adversely affect the "balance of power in the region", an oblique reference to India.
The bill also requires the President to make an assessment every six months of the effectiveness of Pakistan's efforts "to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat Al Qaeda, its affiliated networks, and other extremist forces in Pakistan; to eliminate the safe havens for such forces in Pakistan; and to prevent the return of such forces to Pakistan or Afghanistan".
"This provision simply ensures that the American peoples' tax dollars are being used for their intended purpose," Senator Bob Corker, Republican from Tennessee and co-author of the measure along with Democrat Robert Menendez of New Jersey, said.
The proposed restrictions on Pakistan are buried in the $680.2 billion defence authorisation bill, including conditions on the spending of billions of dollars for training, equipping and reimbursing the Pakistani military.
There are also new requirements for end-use monitoring of weapons and mandates that the US administration certifies that the aid serves America's interests.
Besides the required monitoring of how Pakistan uses defence goods and services that it receives from the United States, the defence authorisation conference report would mandate a number of certifications from the administration and, indirectly, from Pakistan.
One provision affects the $1.6 billion the bill would authorise for a Coalition Support Fund to reimburse Pakistan for logistical and military support for counterinsurgency operations.
The Coalition Support Fund has accounted for 70 per cent of the $12.3 billion in American military and non-military aid to Pakistan since Sep 11, 2001.
The defence authorisation measure would require that, before any more such money is spent, the secretaries of defence and state must certify that doing so is in the US national interest and will not adversely affect the region's balance of power.
Another certification is required before the Pentagon can begin spending any of the $700 million it might receive from requested State Department appropriations in the coming fiscal year for the Pakistan Counter-insurgency Capability Fund.
That programme, begun in fiscal 2009, is meant to train and equip the Pakistani military to fight insurgents and terrorists on its territory.
In a speech to India's parliament last week, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that "it is in our vital interest to try again to make peace with Pakistan" and urged Pakistan to take "strong, effective and sustained action" to prevent the use of its territory for terror.
"If the leaders of Pakistan have the courage, the determination and the statesmanship to take this road to peace, I wish to assure them that we will meet them more than half way,"
Singh said at the time. This was when Singh was scheduled to attend the summit meeting to be held by Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg in the Ural mountains during the week ahead in which Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari was also expected to attend. The SCO is an organization of six countries, including Russia and China, established in 2001 principally to promote cooperation between its members' governments on security related issues. Both India and Pakistan, , enjoy, along with Mongolia and Iran, observer status with the SCO.
More than 170 people died in the attacks in Mumbai last November
Given India’s genuine frustration over Pakistan’s frivolous response to India’s demand for taking critical action against terrorists from Pakistani soil operating in India, particularly the perpetrators of 26/11 Mumbai attack, the statement contained the hidden punch- line that Pakistan singularly lacked the three mentioned qualities to “take the road to peace”. But the statement also contained a hint-line: that negotiation is also to start and take the road to the “promised land” of Composite Dialogue, of course “in our vital interest”.
We may wonder: why then the punch-line! That obviously was to serve as the hard box in which the soft Composite dialogue was to be delivered to USA. The box went all the way to Yekaterinburg where the package had to be delivered to the consignee; only it was made more “striking”. At a meeting on the sidelines of a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit, Prime Minister Manmohan Sing delivered the give- away at the very first handshake with President Asif Ali Zardari, witness all the media present.
The handshake by the way, had none of the drama of the handshake famously offered by Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf to Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee when they met at a South Asian summit in Kathmandu in January 2002, while the two countries mobilized for war following an attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001. Because, the fire and fervor of 26/11 Mumbai had already become faint in the glazed corridors of Ministry of External Affairs where the channel music of Nuclear Deal is streaming. Perhaps it did carry the warmth of a summit meeting between Vajpayee and then Pak Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in Lahore in 1999,
“I am happy to meet you, but my mandate is to tell you that the territory of Pakistan must not be used for terrorism,” he told Zardari.
Zardari perhaps knew what the package contained. Only three days before the Russian summit, in an obvious preparatory visit in what seems to be a step taken by India to set the tone for a dialog with Pakistan, Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan, Sharat Sabharwal had met Pakistan's Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik in Islamabad on Saturday, Jun 13. In a follow up while briefing the media about Manmohan Singh's visit to Russia for a summit, Foreign Secretary, Shivshankar Menon said that the Indian Prime Minister will meet Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari. However, he made it clear that there would not be any structured meeting between the two leaders.
"They will be at the same place at the same time....They will meet, they will shake hands," said Menon. And when asked about what Singh and Zardari may discuss, he said "I don't want to guess what they will discuss."
Further, it was carefully let out to the so-called Indian analysts that while Singh will not agree to reopen formal peace talks until Pakistan took further action against the Lashkar-e-Taiba, India is likely to show its willingness to talk to Pakistan, provided this was focused on exchanging information on curbing terrorism. Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi Immediately downplayed Singh's remark and said the meeting itself was a positive development.
"I think the very fact that the two leaders are meeting at this summit for the first time since the tragic incident in Mumbai is positive, “he said.
The elaborate diplomatic artifice was necessary because when the government had been under considerable pressure to act tough and resist strong pressure exerted by USA to reduce tension with Pak so the latter can concentrate on tackling the Talibans and thus relieve the US forces from their imbroglio in Afghanistan, even talk of any talk with Pak will arouse suspicion as attempts to compromise with that country under US pressure.
In spite of all the ruses and subterfuges, the post-summit pronouncements emanating from official side only prove if anything that the misgivings have come home to roost as realities. They hold out the prospect of another meeting between Sing and Zardari (not withstanding reports that Zardari intends to back out and instead depute Prime Minister Gilani) at a summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Egypt in July and said that senior officials would hold further talks to exchange information on terrorism. Semantics aside, that means the two countries are talking again after a deep crisis in relations following the Mumbai attacks, although India insists for record that it will not reopen the so-called composite dialogue peace process until Pakistan takes action against the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group it blames for the assault.
Sharing the same value system will not act as a glue to hold states together in the international politics. Until recently, India and the United States, due to their multifarious differences, were considered to be ‘estranged democracies’—but their recent agreement on civil nuclear technology has transformed their relationship, and made them ‘engaged democracies.’ The significance of the meeting will not be lost on US officials in Washington. Both countries are considered US allies but, whilst encouraging talks between the two countries, in particular the US does not wish to be seen applying undue pressure on India to meet and negotiate with their long standing adversary. The top US diplomat for South Asia, William Burns, visited the Indian capital New Delhi only last week and any statements he made whilst he was there were carefully analyzed for some indication as to the message he may have brought from the Obama administration for one or both of India and Pakistan. There is no need for any guess work now.
It is not mainly the tensions between India and Pakistan, both of them countries in possession of nuclear weapons that concern the West. Their proximity to and relationships with, more especially Pakistan, both Iran and Afghanistan can have an important bearing on the US strategy in the area.
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