US playing cat and mouse with

By Karamatullah K Ghori
_Many pundits are w;nderi'ng if the
yokiTJg of bounty on Saeed with Zardari's
"'pilgrimage' to India i.s meant to facilitate
) the vi.sit, or cast a shadow over it

L 
_ million bounty on the head of
_ Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, accused
-" by the Indian government as ,the _ mastermind behind the Mumbai ) mayhem of November 2008 that
resulted in the death of-! 66 people, \nc\ud\ng seven Americans, when militants stormed the city.
Saeed's religiolls outfit, the Jamaatul Dawa (Party for Propagation), has been on Washington's list of terrorist organisations for some time; it also figures on a United Nations list of a similar classification. The Dawa is a successor to the Lashkar-eTayyaba, which Saeed founded as armed militant group to fight against Indian control in Kashmir and which was banned in 2002 after being linked to an attack on India's parliament.
The news of Washington's decision to place such a hefty reward on information leading to the arrest and conviction of Saeed - which makes him one of the priciest terrorists on Washington's "wanted list", second only to al Qaeda leader Ayman alZawahiri ($25 million) - was broken to the world by Wendy Sherman_ US under secretary of state, in New Delhi during an official visit to the Indian capital.
It may just be coincidence - or a case of clinical synchronization that Saeed's bounty announcement hit the headlines at precisely the time that the Indians were disclosing to the outside world that Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari would undertake a day-long "private" visit to India, on April 8, for a pilgrimage to the city of Ajmer to seek atonement for his sins at the shrine of the Sufi-saint, Khwaja Gharib Nawaz.
That's where an element of intrigue creeps into the affair. and sets diplomatic pundits and their kind wondering if there's a linkage of sorts in Washington's out of the blue initiative to seek the head of a man who isn't as much in their cross-hairs as in India's because of his alleged pivotal role in the Mumbai massacre.
And he is not much in Pakistan's crosshairs either. In 2009, the Pakistani Supreme Court ordered Saeed freed after he won an appeal against being held under house arrest over possible involvement in the Mumbai attacks.

rJust hours after the US State Department announced the bounty, Saeed appeared on a private TV. He said he was a free man - living in Pakistan - and was reauy to speak with US officials at any time.
"They called me a terrorist. But _iFJ._,,____,,__"__ __ii} ceedings continued for six months. And the full bench of the high court decided that neither me nor my group has any connection with the Mumbai attacks or (any other) terrorist activities," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported Saeed as saying.
Zardari is unpopular among many Pakistanis as he is viewed as a votary of Washington - much more than his predecessor, General Pervez Musharraf, ever was. He's despised and pilloried for carrying a brief for the US and for kowtowing to his American masters like a loyal and unquestioning surrogate at the expense of Pakistan's national interest.

meeting in Delhi, before he moves on to Ajmer, with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will have a lot riding on it.
Zardari will be trying to pick up the pieces where Musharraf had left them, seven years ago in the tourist *}}__	wFt<__.._______R_
Zardari's "pilgrimage" diplomacy as a delayed extension of Musharraf's "Taj" diplomacy to mend ties between the fractious neighbours.
The arch-rivals wet'e close to pulling off a major breakthrough in that 2005 meeting between Musharraf and then-premier Atal Bihari Vajpayee, which broke down at the last minute when all that remained for the two leaders to do was to cross the t's and dot the i's.
The countries have seemed serious on picking up the thread of peace with renewed vigour and purpose since last year.
Pakistan has taken a major stride on the road to reconciliation and normalcy with India with its

The Memogate scandal, still going through the motions of a highlevel judicial probe, has added greater mass to the lay Pakistani's suspicion that their president is a Washington tribune.
This controversy revolves around a memorandum addressed to Admiral Mike Mullen, US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ostensibly seeking the help of the Barack Obama administration in the wake of the killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden by US forces in Pakistan last May to avert a military takeover of the civilian government in Pakistan, as well as assisting in a Washington insider takeover of the government and military apparatus. The memo is alleged to have been drafted at the behest of Zardari.
Memogate's principal character, Mansoor Ejaz, has added fuel to the fire by contending that Zardari had been tipped off, by his American handlers of their stealth operation against bin Laden. That, understandably, leaves pundits wondering if the yoking of bounty on Saeed with Zardari's "pilgrimage" to India is meant to facilitate the visit, or cast a shadow over it?
Zardari's planned call on the saint's shrine is seen by many as a nothing more than a fig-leaf; his

bold decision - despite a huge backlash from rightwing religious parties - to grant "most favoured nation" status to India in the interests of imparting a hefty boost to trade and economic linkages with its estranged neighbour.
Understandably, Zardari must have been sent some positive and encouraging signals from Delhi to embark on his maiden visit to India as president of Pakistan; he couldn't be taking a leap, entirely, in the dark, especially with so much suspicion surrounding his enigmatic role at the pinnacle of Pakistan's Byzantine political culture.	.
Pundits agree that a new visa agreement will be signed by Zardari and Manmohan in their meeting, greatly liberalising travel for their respective nationals to each other's country. That should give a quantum boost to people-to-people contacts, always said asIa key to helping normalise relations.
But soothsayers are also saying that India could be persuaded to relent on two other prickly issueS - the Siachen and Sir Creek territorial disputes - on which even the [me print of an agreement has been ready for years - going back to the era when the late Rajiv Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto were in power in the late 19808.

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The generals on both sides of the "great divide" who threw span
ners in the works are now believed ffi to be inclined to look beyond their NA_ noses; the Pakistani initiative on tho trade liberalisation couldn't have the come without the military general lnec. headquarters lifting its reservations bIo

iand falling in line with the politicos. 	The Cassandras, however, are

lworried that Washington's bounty on Saeed could well influence the agenda of Zardari's visit to Delhi no: adversely and recalibrate the Indian wit priority to focus mainly, if not sole- unv Iy, on their grouse against Pakistan thd for not doing enough to bring Saeed
and others of his ilk to book forth3,j 	their crimes in Mumbai.	itar
Grist to this apprehension has stn been provided by the gushing enthu- jus! siasm of Indian officialdom's vocif- in: erous welcome to tJ{e bounty move Ch against Saeed.
Not surprisingly, the bounty has tan stirred a tepid, if not cool, response the from Pakistan, where the general suI feeling is that Washington has mo resorted to blatant arm-twist41g to Sac force Pakistan into relenting on the the tangled issue of the land transit of att North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
(NATO) supplies across its territory; lio that corridor has been frozen since an last November when an American Pa night raid against a military check- Sa post in the tribal belt close to co' Afghanistan killed 24 Pakistani sol- Th di=. as
The Pakistani parliament is still str deliberating on whether the NATO
facility should be restored or not. an However, there's complete consen- un sus that it should not be reopened ag unless an unconditional apology is tho forthcoming from Washington for un the deaths of the Pakistani soldiers. ag
Opting to give priority to wield
ing a stout stick, instead of offering ffii carrots, Washington can only stay or the hands of those in' the Pakistani he establishment who may want to ar extricate the two "allies" out of this p2 tight comer. At the same time, such S\J
a dramatic and sensational move by
the Americans would only raise the tb anti-American flag of the Pakistani bl masses even further.	is
Rightwing religious parties have 01
already whipped up a mass frenzy vi on the issue; Saeed is in the thick of pc the populist anti-American move- iD ment and putting a bounty on his U head is as good as showing the red
rag to an enraged bull.	m
Zardari, a friend of the ti Americans, cannot insulate himself w from the heat of the fire lit by his ta
ill-advised friends; he doesn't need If enemies with friends like these. K COURTESY ASIA TIMES ONLINE	rl
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The writer is aformer Pakistani ambassador

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