Editorial from "The Hindustan Times" - June 7, 1999

From treating Kashmir as a disputed territory to describing the Line of Control as an undelineated approximation, Pakistan has succeeded only in exposing itself as a direct intruder into Indian territory rather than the aider and abettor of militancy. India no longer needs to convince anybody, not even the US, that its airstrikes in the Kargil sector were aimed not so much against indigenous insurrectionists as to flush out armed intruders from across the border. Pakistan Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz's sudden discovery that the Line of Control between India and Pakistan had never been delineated is not so much an attempt to raise a new issue as to confess to the world that it has been in the recent past surreptitiously trying to alter the Line of Control. In this background, US President Clinton's advice to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to "respect the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir" is a clear message that the US would not help in pressurising India to stop its airstrikes in Kargil until Pakistan actually withdrew its forces back to its own side of the Line of Control. It is another matter that the super power that does not recognise the sovereignty of nations is advising sovereign nations to respect a bilaterally accepted line of control. Rather than celebrate the tacit US warning to Pakistan, India must carry on the campaign to rid the Kashmir area of armed infiltrators.

The return of Flt Lt Nachiketa from almost a week of captivity in Pakistan also indicates Islamabad’s realisation that the game is not going in its favour. India has done the right thing by telling Mr Sartaj Aziz that there was no point in his proposed visit to Delhi at this juncture. It would have been injudicious for Pakistan to accept the fact of intrusion into the Indian side of the LoC. But it would be disingenuous if Mr Aziz explains away the presence of Pak troops in the Kargil sector as an accident caused by a misunderstanding of the location of the LoC. It is now being recognised on both sides that the undeclared war cannot go on for long and undoubtedly the US President’s message would act as a spur for Pakistan to close the Kargil front and stop opening new ones elsewhere.