'Obama shouldn't lean on India to placate Pak'

When President Obama has a candid conversation with Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh when they meet next month in New Delhi and discuss Afghanistan, "the president ought to refrain from asking India--as many in his administration urge him--how it can placate the Pakistan Army in order to evoke better counterterrorism cooperation from it," a report by a leading think tank in Washington, DC has said.

The report prepared to coincide with the US president's visit to India by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, authored by its senior associate Ashley J Tellis, noted, "As Obama knows, there is nothing that India can meaningfully do to assuage Pakistani paranoia beyond what it has done already, namely offer to sustain the peace process and maintain its restraint in the use of force despite the continuing terrorist attacks emanating from Pakistan."

The report, an advance copy of which was made available to rediff.com, warned that "any effort to further appease the Pakistani military by leaning on New Delhi will not only be counterproductive for the President's larger objectives, it will also result in a missed opportunity to deepen the triangular dialogue and cooperation between the United States, Afghanistan, and India, that is absolutely necessary for the preservation of regional stability."

The report said that with regard to policy goals in Afghanistan, Obama and Singh should have a no-holds barred discussion and Obama "needs to discuss with his Indian hosts, how his administration intends to manage the knotty problems of reconciliation with the Taliban, Pakistan's role in the Afghan endgame, and current plans pertaining to the announced withdrawal of US forces in July 2011."

The report bemoaned that "it is surprising how hard it is for American and Indian diplomats to have an honest, unrehearsed conversation on the difficult issues of national security that engulf the two states," particularly on Afghanistan. It said, "Even though US policy has evolved dramatically since Obama took office, the talking points pertaining to Afghanistan at the US end have simply not kept place."

Consequently, according to the report, "The result has been a series of desultory conversations, with both parties harking to lofty but anodyne principles, losing in the process the opportunity to seriously address the deepest fears and reservations held by the other."