India's diplomatic offensive

By all appearances, India seems to have launched a diplomatic offensive to secure international support for a future action against Pakistan in the name of combating terrorism. On Monday, its foreign secretary, Shiv Shanker Menon, briefed about a dozen New Delhi-based ambassadors on the "evidence" of Pakistan's alleged involvement.
He gave them a 100-page dossier comprising transcripts of alleged telephone conversations between the Mumbai attackers and their handlers in Pakistan, confession of the lone surviving gunman Ajmal Kasab, some phone numbers that the gunmen allegedly talked to as they sailed to India. In a way, implicating Pakistan Menon wondered how a sophisticated, commando-style assault "could occur without anyone in the establishment knowing it was happening".
Indian envoys abroad will also give similar briefings to their host countries, as Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee writes letters to his counterparts, "describing...the progress we have made in our investigation and evidence we have collected". In the meanwhile, India's Home Minister Chidambaram prepares to leave for Washington to brief the US administration on the "elaborate" attack that could only be from "state or state-assisted actors".
That is launching a diplomatic offensive to isolate Pakistan. Among those taken in by the India's propaganda rather early in the day, was the United States assistant secretary of state, Richard Boucher. Soon after receiving Hilal-i-Quaid-i-Azam award for his services to strengthen Pak-US relations on Monday he informed the media he was "clear" that the Mumbai attackers had "links that led to Pakistani soil". That's ironic.
But let us see what US Vice President-elect Joseph Biden has to tell Pakistan when he arrives here later this week. India wants the perpetrators of Mumbai carnage to be brought to "Indian justice". The United States too has trained a sharper focus on the Mumbai tragedy, among other incentives for its stepped-up interest being the fact that among the victims were at least six Americans.
Pakistan has no soft corner for the terrorists either, be they in the north-west tribal region or in India or elsewhere. It bears repetition to say that no other country has suffered at the hands of international terrorism so much as Pakistan has. There is no reason to doubt its commitment to curb and combat terrorism wherever it raises its ugly head.
Naturally, on receiving the Indian dossier Pakistan promised a 'thorough examination' of the document. Given the fact that concoction of evidence against the opponents is an inescapable part of legal proceedings in the subcontinent, and also because of the fact that intelligence agencies, anywhere, show little regard to the truth, the Indian "evidence" would have to stand the test of its legality.
Generally, the courts do not treat transcripts, phone intercepts, photocopies and confessions made in police custody as first rate evidence, mainly for the likelihood of their tampering with the help of available technology. Yet there is no gainsaying that the challenge of India's diplomatic offensive is formidable and requires of Pakistan to go for a befitting response.
Of course, presently a kind of bias exists among the international community against Pakistan, as indicated by the recent vote in the Security Council against Jamat-ud-Dawa. India has the additional clout also for its potential to emerge as a counterweight to China which sits well with many western states. But the argument that what had happened in Mumbai could be only a Pakistan-specific job is highly untenable.
Who doesn't know that not less than a score of separatist movements are at work in India at any time of the year? Then there are the deeply disgruntled minorities whose relations with the Hindu majority have never been very amiable. And, most important, why should India think that terrorism which has emerged as the major threat to international order will spare it while it would not spare any other country?
If the Indian government had not been able to contain and confront terrorists on its soil then that is its own problem. Obviously, the Indian administration wants some scapegoats for a show trial. Rightly then Foreign Minister Qureshi has declared that Pakistan will not hand over any Pakistani citizen to India.
If Pakistan can launch a full-fledged war on terrorists and militants inside its own territory there is no reason why it cannot try and punish an individual if he is guilty of terrorism. Incriminating Pakistan of involvement is nothing but an expression of India's hubris; something the world should guard against.