New York Times
Gen. Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan has been performing a political high-wire act since Sept. 11 by supporting the war against terrorism while trying to prevent a rebellion at home among Islamic fundamentalists angered by his rejection of the Taliban. He has succeeded thus far, but now faces new dangers created in part by his own tolerance for terrorists before Sept. 11. If he does not deal with these threats quickly and effectively, he may undermine his own rule as well as the American campaign against terrorism.
General Musharraf must crack down on terrorist groups operating in his own country. Urgent action is needed after the attack last week on India's Parliament, attributed by India to militant groups in Pakistan. In addition, hundreds of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters have slipped into Pakistan's mountainous northwestern frontier, where there is strong resistance to General Musharraf's embrace of America. Troops loyal to Osama bin Laden clashed with their Pakistani captors yesterday. ...
General Musharraf must not give in to the temptation to see home-grown terrorist groups as somehow more acceptable than those he has been helping to combat in Afghanistan. ...
General Musharraf made a bold decision to side with the United States after Sept. 11. In return, Pakistan has been given more than $1 billion in loans and debt relief and is likely to benefit from the influx of aid to reconstruct Afghanistan. But now that General Musharraf has turned Pakistan's foreign policies around, he has to go after the forces at home that want to keep terrorism alive, provoke a war with India and eventually unseat General Musharraf himself and make Pakistan an Islamic fundamentalist state.
Dallas Morning News
Pakistan made the right decision in September to abandon its erstwhile Taliban allies and to join the coalition against global terrorism. As Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters retreat from Afghanistan into the wilds of northern Pakistan, and as tensions mount between it and fellow nuclear power India, it needs to keep making the right decisions. That means that it must do two things. It must intensify its military patrols on its border with Afghanistan to halt the mass escape, calling in the United States and other coalition forces, if necessary. And it must crack down on the two Pakistan-based militant organizations that India believes carried out the deadly attack on its parliament last week.
It was in Pakistan's own best interest to join the coalition. Doing otherwise would have put it on the wrong side of history and of the United States.
It is equally in its own best interest to assist with the capture of Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants and to eliminate the militant groups Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba. If it does not do the former, it risks a confrontation with the United States. If it does not do the latter, it increases its risk of war with India, whose government is under intense domestic political pressure to destroy the militant organizations. ...
Pakistan has found the militant organizations helpful in prosecuting its clandestine war to win complete control over Kashmir, which it disputes with India. It used the Taliban for the same purpose. However, it should not let its obsession with Kashmir blind it to the risk of a nuclear confrontation with India.
By nabbing Mr. bin Laden and his cohorts, Pakistan could endear itself to the United States for generations. By cracking down on anti-Indian militants, it could lay the predicate for a peaceful resolution of the conflict in Kashmir. May it seize both opportunities.
Washington Times
Vice President Richard B. Cheney's revelation, made in an interview with The Washington Times on Tuesday, that President Bush made the decision to try Zacarias Moussaoui in federal court is the clearest sign yet that the administration appears to be reconsidering the very concept of military tribunals for al Qaeda terrorist suspects, which would be a welcome development indeed. By any standard, Mr. Moussaoui would appear to have been a prime example of the sort of terrorist suspect Mr. Bush had in mind when he issued a Nov. 13 executive order authorizing the tribunals. The order said that military authorities could conduct trials in secret, choose counsel for defendants and impose the death penalty by a two-thirds vote. The accused -- non-U.S. citizens whom the government charges were part of an international terrorist conspiracy to murder thousands of Americans on September 11 -- would have no right of appeal. ...
In truth, it has become increasingly clear that, as criticism of military tribunals mounted from the political left and right alike, the administration had lost any enthusiasm it ever had for the concept. When Attorney General John Ashcroft testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee this month, he side-stepped most of the substantive questions about the workings of military tribunals, noting that the Pentagon had been charged with handling the details. But Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz said as recently as Dec. 12 that the Justice Department had not even discussed with the Pentagon whether to try Mr. Moussaoui in a military or civilian court. Mr. Wolfowitz, who was doing his level-best to defend tribunals in an appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that "presumably" the Justice Department's decision to indict Mr. Moussaoui in a civilian court "is an indication that they did not have the problems ... of important evidence that might not be admitted under normal rules of procedure, or the problem of relying on classified evidence." Hopefully, the administration will adopt the Moussaoui model in other of the bin Laden terror network cases tried in this country.
Washington Post
Policymakers are still debating where the war on terrorism should go next, but as a practical matter it has already moved -- to Pakistan, where it has been driven by an extraordinary and dangerous confluence of events in the past few days. Hundreds of Taliban and al Qaeda fighters, probably including a number of senior leaders, have filtered into Pakistan from Afghanistan, eluding the army of Gen. Pervez Musharraf. At the same time -- and surely not by coincidence -- Pakistani terrorist groups long connected to both al Qaeda and the Taliban have been credibly blamed by India for carrying out a suicide assault on the parliament building in New Delhi. Mr. Musharraf, who chose, after Sept. 11, to align his military regime with the United States and against the terrorists, now faces a crucial, two-front test of that commitment. Final defeat of the Taliban and al Qaeda may depend on how aggressively his forces move to kill or arrest the militants who have crossed the border; and a serious move against the Pakistani groups is essential to divorcing his government from extremism and avoiding military action by India. ...
Fortunately, India's democratic government has reacted to the assault with admirable restraint; though it has as much right as the United States or Israel to defend itself against the extremists, it has so far refrained from acting while waiting to see what Mr. Musharraf would do. The Pakistani president has temporized, demanding to see evidence that the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed groups were involved. Meanwhile, his forces have been busy with al Qaeda, arresting more than 150 fugitives and fighting a gun battle with one group. Mr. Musharraf's defenders protest that he cannot be expected to take on both groups of extremists at once, and U.S. officials have been cautious, at least in public, in pressing him to do so. Yet aggressive action on both fronts is essential, above all for Pakistan's sake -- it offers Mr. Musharraf the chance to purge his regime once and for all of its corrupting links to Islamic extremism and terrorism. If he can act decisively in the coming weeks Mr. Musharraf could put Pakistan firmly on a course to greater stability and renewed development. If he flinches, he will likely face an even greater crisis.
New York Newsday
Just as the war on terrorism is winding down in Afghanistan, the region is heating up with disturbing talk of another war brewing in the standoff between India and Pakistan over the terror attack on India's parliament.
This is an extremely dangerous confrontation, and all nations with vital interests in the region - including the United States - ought to work to avert the break-out of combat between the subcontinent's two nuclear powers.
After the suicide attack on India's parliament last week by five Islamist terrorists, in which eight people were killed, India blamed the Pakistan-based groups Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed and demanded that Islamabad shut them down and arrest their leaders. Pakistan's intelligence agency, ISI, has long been suspected of funding and training the two groups, which have had loose ties with the Taliban and al-Qaida in their efforts to foment a Muslim rebellion in the breakaway Indian region of Kashmir. ...
The confrontation between the two powers focuses on the Muslim insurgency in Kashmir, which has sparked two previous wars between India and Pakistan. It carries great dangers. Now terror has become part of the equation, and it's incumbent on Washington to let Musharraf know he must extend his commitment against terrorism to groups operating in his own nation. India, for its part, must continue to exercise restraint, as it has so far, to its credit.
Boston Herald
Those in Congress and Europe who predicted America's withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty would ruin U.S. relations with Russia were dead wrong.
Last Friday, President Bush formally notified the Russians of his intention to end the treaty in six months, so this nation can begin testing an anti-missile defense.
Nervous Nellies insisted that to abandon the Cold War relic might resurrect the arms race or, at least, put a chill in relations with Russia.
But in an interview with London's Financial Times, Russian President Vladimir Putin said America's withdrawal from the treaty won't affect "the spirit of partnership and even alliance" between our nations.
While Moscow still hopes to change U.S. minds, Russian defense minister Sergei Ivanov said the move did not threaten Russia's security and would not hamper efforts to cut both nation's stockpiles of nuclear warheads to below 2,000.
Since Sept. 11, the United States and Russia have moved closer than at any point since the end of the old Soviet Union. Putin quickly pledged his support for the war on terrorism. Washington and London are trying to craft a role for Russia in shaping NATO strategy.
As they confront the common threat of Islamic extremism, Russia and the United States are destined to find their interests increasingly coinciding. Moscow may not like U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, but is quickly learning to live with it.
(Compiled by United Press International)
