India's burgeoning ties with the US is reason behind Pakistan's sudden turn to Israel, reporrts Graham Usher in Islamabad On 13 November the 13th South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit in Bangladesh closed with the accession of Afghanistan to its ranks and calls for "combating terrorism" but with no meaningful progress on poverty, trade or festering regional conflicts like Kashmir. Twenty years since its founding, SAARC remains hostage to the rivalry and ambitions of its two most powerful members, India and Pakistan. "SAARC is mired in conflict, you cannot deny it," admitted Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz following a largely fruitless meeting with his Indian counterpart, Manmohan Singh, on the fringes of the summit. The Indo-Pakistan conflict overshadows South Asia the way the Arab-Israel conflict overshadows the Middle East. It explains developments which apparently have little to do with it, including, say Pakistanis, their country's recent "opening up" to Israel, consecrated by the first ever official meeting between the two states' foreign ministers in Istanbul in September. Israel has long sought diplomatic ties with Pakistan, in line with a time-worn strategy aimed at breaching Muslim hostility to the Jewish state by striking treaties with individual Muslim states. But the driving force behind September's public rapprochement was Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. Two years ago he called on his people to recognise the fact (if not yet the state) of Israel as part of his post-9/11 "enlightened moderation" policy, in which Muslim states are urged to deal with extremists in their midst while the West is urged to deal with the causes of extremism, above all, in his view, the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the Indian occupation of Kashmir. He followed the Istanbul parley with a "chance" encounter with Ariel Sharon on the stairwell of the United Nations General Assembly in New York as well as a public address to the American Jewish Congress (AJC), the first ever by a president of an Islamic republic. The compliment was returned on 11 November, when AJC Chairman Jack Rosen paid court to Musharraf at his Rawlpindi headquarters. "President Musharraf's leadership role gives us hope," said Rosen. Musharraf nodded, adding, however, that though contacts with Israel were possible, neither recognition nor trade would be forthcoming until the establishment of a Palestinian state. One of the motives for Musharraf's diplomacy with Israel is to place Pakistan on the right side in the "war on terror", akin to his earlier decisions to end Pakistan's official backing of the Taliban and arrest and extradition to the US of some 500 alleged Al-Qaeda operatives. But there are other motives even closer to home, though they have little to do with Israel or the establishment of a Palestinian state. They have everything to do with India, say analysts. One is New Delhi's burgeoning military relationship with India, including, says a Pakistan general, the sharing of intelligence on Pakistan's nuclear programme. There is nothing especially new about this: India has had full diplomatic relations with Israel for 13 years and covert ones for half a century (as, in fact, has Pakistan). What has alarmed Pakistan is the perception that India has become the US "choice in the region", to be nurtured as a superpower and counterweight to China. This has made the taboo over dealing with Israel not only outdated but self- defeating, says Niaz Niak, a former Pakistan foreign secretary. "Rather the perception is that increasingly open channels to Israel, including the transfer of strategic (nuclear) technology, will help restore the strategic balance in South Asia". The second is Musharraf's recognition that Pakistan has an image-problem in the west, and nowhere more so than the United States. The road to redemption is through warmer relations with Israel, believes his advisors, reinforced by their absolute conviction that the Jewish lobby not only controls Congress and the presidency but also the industrial-military complex and the media. "The US media outlets are controlled by the Jewish lobby," says Niak. "So to get a better image across we need relations with Israel. This will facilitate the image of Pakistan as a moderate Islamic country. The belief is that Pakistan has been unnecessarily alienating the western media due to its stance on Israel". Finally -- and most importantly -- Pakistan has become rattled by the 18 July US-India accord which essentially gives a "special status" to India's nuclear programme separate from Pakistan's. This is perhaps Islamabad's greatest fear: the promotion of India as a "front-rank" nuclear power, while leaving Pakistan mired as a distrusted, and periodically sanctioned second- or third-rank power. The solution, says Pakistani analyst Mehmood-ul-Khan, is a reaching out to Israel, not as an adversary (one of the rationales Pakistan gave for developing the "Islamic bomb" to its Arab backers) but as an ally . "Both Israel and Pakistan have a problem of acceptability in the international community as nuclear-weapons states," he says. "But were they to launch a joint bid, they could succeed in getting approval in the US for an accord similar to the one signed with India. The reasoning is that Israel could provide the muscle of the Jewish lobby in Washington and Pakistan could provide the cover for Israel and the US against the notion that double standards are again at work. It would allow India, Israel and Pakistan to be brought into the nuclear non-proliferation architecture under a revised Non- Proliferation Treaty."
