By C. Raja Mohan appeared in "The Hindu" on June 10, 1999

As India prepares to receive the Foreign Minister of Pakistan, Mr. Sartaj Aziz, in New Delhi on Saturday, the diplomatic position adopted by the United States is likely to have the greatest bearing on the efforts to defuse the current crisis over Kargil. With the sole exception of China, the U.S. has the biggest political influence over the political and security establishments in Pakistan.

But diplomacy, founded on the threat to use sufficient force, has an enormous role in bringing international pressures on Pakistan to recognise the folly of its military misadventure. The international reaction has been favourable to India because of the incontrovertible facts on the ground - the Pakistani aggression across the LoC and the responsible posture adopted by India on Kargil.

The Indian readiness to explore non-military options to vacate the infiltration, even as it steps up its military offensive, has been a key element in influencing international perceptions of Kargil. The Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, reaffirmed this balance between diplomacy and the use of force in his address to the nation on Monday.

Mr. Vajpayee's central message to the international community is simple: India is fully prepared to discuss with Pakistan any non- military approach to the restoration of the status quo ante in Kashmir. If reason and sanity do not prevail in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, India will have a ``job at hand'' which it will finish at all costs.

The biggest gain for Indian diplomacy has been Washington's surprisingly positive attitude. Tuesday's statement from a senior official of the National Security Council, Mr. Bruce Riedel, insisting that the Pakistani forces withdraw to the LoC has in many ways altered the international dimensions of the Kargil crisis.

The U.S. position has undercut one of Pakistan's principal assumptions in embarking on the misadventure. If Islamabad's expectation was that it could get the U.S. to intervene on its behalf by raising the military temperature in Kashmir, it has failed miserably.

Signals from Washington over the last few days suggest that the Clinton administration has been exerting pressure on Pakistan to defuse the crisis. The letter from the President, Mr. Bill Clinton, delivered to the Pakistani Prime Minister, Mr. Nawaz Sharif, over the weekend is said to have been harsh and it insisted on the withdrawal of Pakistani infiltration.

The U.S. position has had many strands that have begun to work in India's favour. First was the acknowledgement of the fact that the genesis of the crisis lay in Pakistan's adventurism. Second, the refusal of the Clinton administration to support Pakistan's call for internationalisation of the Kashmir dispute in the wake of the Kargil crisis. Pakistan's calculation was that the military tensions could be used to bring the United Nations Security Council into play. The U.S. determination not to go along undercut this objective.

The third and more significant has been the firm American rejection of the Pakistani questioning of the LoC. In challenging its legitimacy, Pakistan may have expected to reopen questions that were settled 27 years ago and consolidate territorial gains acquired by covert aggression this winter. But the Clinton administration's decision to go public with its position on the sanctity of the LoC should significantly set back Pakistani dreams of new map-making in Kashmir.

Although New Delhi is aware that the U.S. has been exerting a restraining influence on Pakistan, there is very little public evidence of the U.S. position. Now, on the eve of the Indo- Pakistani talks, Washington has gone public with its formulation that ``restraint and a reaffirmation of the Line of Control is the basis'' on which the two nations should move forward.

Elaborating, the White House said, ``We think that the Line of Control has been demarcated over the years. The two parties have not previously had significant differences about where the Line of Control is. We think that means, in practice, the forces which have crossed the line should withdraw to where they came from. The urgent step that we need here is to see restraint exercised and a return to the Line of Control.''

This clear affirmation has brought a rare harmony between the political objectives of New Delhi and Washington on any issue relating to Jammu and Kashmir over the last many decades. (But differences on modalities surely remain). Those who recall the unremitting pressures exerted by the Clinton administration on New Delhi over the Kashmir issue in the early 1990s do wonder about the reasons for an apparently significant change in the U.S. attitude. Four factors could be at work.

First, since the beginning of the Clinton administration's second term in 1997, Washington has been expressing a keen desire to build a new relationship with India and has initiated the strategic dialogue. Despite the difficulties which arose after the Indian nuclear tests in May 1998, U.S. officials have been indicating that they are now prepared to treat India and Pakistan differently and that the U.S. relations with each country would acquire a separate momentum and direction.

Given the tragic legacy of mistrust in Indo-U.S. relations, the U.S. indication that merits of the case would define its position on Indo- Pakistani differences was not widely believed in India. The U.S. position on Kargil could perhaps provide the basis for building a new political confidence between New Delhi and Washington.

Second, the U.S. remains concerned at the dangers of tensions between India and Pakistan escalating into a nuclear conflict. Perhaps it was on this basis that Islamabad was expecting a quick American intervention in the subcontinent and to facilitate it, officials in Pakistan began to darkly hint at the possibility of using nuclear weapons.

But the nuclear blackmail has boomeranged. The concerns at nuclear escalation are making the U.S. counsel restraint to Pakistan. The Clinton administration believes that the rules of engagement in the subcontinent have fundamentally changed with the advent of nuclear weapons. And that irresponsible actions, such as the one initiated by Pakistan in Kargil, could destabilise the situation. The argument in the U.S. could be that a ``nuclear flashpoint'' in South Asia can only be prevented through stability of Indo-Pakistani relations and anything that undermines this process must be dampened.

Third, the Clinton administration has recognised the potential of the Lahore process to end the extended bitterness in India- Pakistan relations. It is on record acknowledging Mr. Vajpayee's political courage in affirming the finality of Partition by visiting the Minar-e-Pakistan in Lahore. The U.S. believes that the Kargil aggression undermines the Lahore process and must be quickly resolved.

Fourth, the Clinton administration has always argued that as a ``failing state'' Pakistan must be saved from itself. While this assumption has made the U.S. more than lenient in dealing with Pakistan's trangressions, there may be growing American frustration with Islamabad's tendency to run away with the ball whether in Afghanistan or in the subcontinent.

Whatever the reasons for the encouraging signals from the Clinton administration, it is by no means clear that Washington can prevail over the hotheads in Islamabad and Rawalpindi. India will have to rely on its own military power to evict those occupying its territory. At the same time, as diplomacy comes to the forefront, India will need to take full advantage of the significant changes in Washington's approach to the conflict.